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The Library of Choice Fiction. Issued Monthly, By Subscription $6.00 per annum. No. 6. Nov., 1890. 

Entered at Chicago Postoffice as second-class matier. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 

(PKTKR AND JOHN) 

By guy DE MAUPASSANT 



CHICAGO: 

LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS 


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PIERRE ET JEAN 


(PETER AND JOHN) 


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THE LIBRARY OF CHOICE FICTION. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 

( PETER AND JOHN ) 



GUY DE MAUPASSANT 

u 

Author of “ Notre Cceur,” etc. 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 

BY 

ALEXINA LORANGER 
\ 



CHICAGO: 

LAIRD & LEE, Publishers 
1890 







Hf!' 


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Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred 
and ninety, by LAIRD & LEE, in the office of the librarian of Con- 
gress at Washington. 


(All rights reserved.) 


INTRODUCTION. 


“the novel.” 

I have no intention of pleading here 
for the little novel that follows. On the 
contrary, the ideas that I shall endeavor 
to make plain, may rather attract criti- 
cism on the style of psychological study 
which I have undertaken in Pierre 'and 
Jean. 

I wish to give my attention to the 
novel in general. 

I am not the only one to whom the 
same reproach has been addressed by 
the same critics, each time a new book 
has appeared. 

In the midst of eulogistic phrases, I 
invariably find this one from the same 
pens : 

“The greatest fault of this work is 

that, properly speaking, it is not a novel.’^ 
13 


14 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


We might reply' to this by the same 
argument : 

“ The greatest fault of the writer who 
does me the honor of judging my work 
is that he is not a critic.’^ 

What, in fact, are the essential char- 
acteristics of the critic ? 

He must, without prejudices, without 
preconceived opinions, without the ideas 
of any particular school, without connec- 
tions with any class of artist, understand, 
distinguish and explain the most adverse 
tendencies, the most contrary tempera- 
ments, and admit the most diversified 
researches of art. 

The critic who, after Manon Lescaut, 
Paul and Virginie, Don Quixote, Les 
Liaisons D anger euses, Wert her, the Elec- 
tive Affinities, Clarissa Harlowe, Emile, 
Candide, Cinq-Mars, Reni, The Three 
Musketeers, Mauprat, le Pere Goriot, 
la Coustne Bette, Colomba, Le Rouge et le 
Notr, Mademoiselle de Maupin, iTotre 
Dame de Parts, Salammbo, Madame 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


15 


Bov ary, Adolphe, M. de C amors, L’As- 
sommoir, Sappho, etc., still dares to write: 
“This is a novel and that is not,” seems 
to me endowed with a perspicacity that 
very much resembles incompetency. 

Generally this critic understands a 
novel, as consisting of an adventure more 
or less probable, arranged in the style of 
a drama in three acts; the first containing 
the exposition, the second the action, and 
the third the denouement. 

This style of composition is perfectly 
admirable on condition that all others 
should be accepted as well. 

Do any rules for writing a novel exist, 
outside of which a written narrative 
should bear another name ? 

If Don Quixote is a novel, is Le Rouge 
et le Noir another ? If Monte Cristo is 
a novel, is D A ssornmoir one also } Can 
a comparison be established between the 
Elective Affinities Goethe, the Three 
Musketeers of Dumas, Madame Bovary 
by Flaubert, M. de Camors by M. O. 


i6 


PIERRE ET JEA.V 


Feuillet and Germinal by M. Zola? 
Which of these works is a novel ? What 
are those famous rules ? Whence do 
they come ? Who established them ? 
In virtue of what principle, of what 
authority, and of what course of reason- 
ing ? 

It appears, however, that these critics 
know in a sure and indubitable manner 
what constitutes a novel, and what dis- 
tinguishes it from another work which is 
not one. This signifies simply that, with- 
out being producers, they have a leaning 
toward one school, and that they reject, 
as novelists themselves do, all the works 
conceived and executed outside of their 
own esthetics. 

An intelligent critic should, on the con- 
trary, seek for everything that least re- 
sembles the novels already written, and 
induce young authors to venture into new 
paths as much as possible. 

All writers, Victor Hugo, as well as M. 
Zola, have persistently claimed the abso- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


17 


lute and indisputable right of composing, 
that is, to imagine or observe, according 
to their personal conception of art. Tal- 
ent comes of originality, which is a special 
manner of thinking, seeing, understanding 
and judging. Now, the critic who pre- 
tends to define the novel according to the 
ideas he has formed from his favorite 
novels, and to establish certain invariable 
rules of composition, will always combat 
the genius of an artist who introduces a 
new style. A critic who would truly de- 
serve the name should be simply an ana- 
lyst without tendencies, without prefer- 
ences, without passions, and, like a judge 
in painting, should take note only of the 
artistic value of the object of art submit- 
ted to him. His comprehension, open to 
everything, should so completely absorb 
his personality that he could appreciate 
and even praise the very books which, as 
a man, he does not like, but which he 
should understand as a judge. 

But most critics are, after all, only 

Pierre et Jean 2 


i8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


readers, and the result is, that they often 
find fault without reason, or praise us 
without reserve and without measure. 

The reader, who seeks in a book merely 
to satisfy the natural tendencies of his 
mind, demands that the writer should 
respond to his predominating taste, and 
invariably qualifies as remarkable or well 
written, the work wherein he finds the 
passage that pleases his idealistic, gay, 
jovial, sad, dreamy, or positive imagina- 
tion. 

In fact, the public is composed of 
numerous groups, who cry out to us: 

“ Console me.” 

” Amuse me.” 

“ Sadden me.” 

“ Move me.” 

“Make me dream.” 

“ Make me tremble.” 

“ Make me weep.” 

“ Make me think.” 

A few superior minds alone ask of 
the artist : 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


19 


“Make us something beautiful, in what- 
ever form you wish, according to your 
temperament.” 

The artist tries, succeeds or fails. 

The critic should appreciate the result 
only according to the nature of the effort, 
and he has no right to consider the tend- 
encies. 

This has already been written a thou- 
sand times, but it must be repeated again. 

After the literary schools, which have 
endeavored to give us a deformed, super- 
human, poetic, tender, charming or superb 
vision of life, has come a realistic or natur- 
alistic school, which professes to show us 
the truth, nothing but the truth and the 
whole truth. 

We must admit, with equal interest, 
these theories of art, that differ so widely, 
and judge the works they produce solely 
from the point of view of their artistic 
value, by accepting, a priori, the general 
ideas which gave them birth. 

To contest the right of a writer to pro- 


20 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


duce a poetic or a realistic work, is to wish 
to force him to modify his temperament, 
to challenge his originality, to not permit 
him to use the eye and intelligence which 
nature has given him. 

To reproach him of seeing things, beau- 
tiful or ugly, small or heroic, graceful or 
sinister, is to reproach him of being con- 
formed in such or such manner, and of 
not having a vision concurrent with our 
own. 

Let us leave him free to understand, to 
observe, to conceive as he pleases, pro- 
vided he is an artist. Let us become 
poetically exalted to judge an idealist, 
and let us prove to him that his dream is 
mediocre, common-place, not sufficiently 
foolish or magnificent ; but, if we judge a 
naturalist, let us show him where the dif- 
ference lies between truth in life and truth 
in books. 

It it evident that schools so different 
must use absolutely contrary methods of 
compositions 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


21 


The novelist who transforms the con- 
stant, brutal, and displeasing truth, to 
draw from it an exceptional and stirring 
adventure, without perceptibly exagger- 
ating probability, must manipulate events 
at his will, and prepare and arrange them 
to please and move the reader. The 
plan of his novel is but a series of in- 
genious combinations leading adroitly to 
the denouement. The incidents are dis- 
posed and graduated toward the culmi- 
nating point and final effect, which is a 
capital and decisive event, satisfying all 
the curiosities awakened at the begin- 
ning, placing a barrier to further interest, 
and terminating the related narrative so 
completely, that we feel no desire to 
know what will become of the most in- 
teresting personages on the morrow. 

The novelist who, on the contrary, 
pretends to give us an exact picture of 
life, must carefully avoid all series of 
events that might appear exceptional. 
His aim is, not to relate a narrative to 


22 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


amuse or rouse our sympathies, but to 
force us to think, to understand the deep 
and hidden meaning of events. By dint 
of having seen and meditated, he looks 
on the universe, things, facts, and men 
in a certain way peculiar to him, and 
which is the result of the ensemble of his 
observations and mature reflections. It 
is that personal vision of the world, which 
he tries to communicate to us by repro- 
ducing it in a book. To move us, as he 
himself has been, by the spectacle of life, 
he must reproduce it before our eyes 
with a scrupulous exactness. He must, 
therefore, compose his work in a manner 
so skillful, so dissimulated, and of so 
simple an appearance, that it is impossible 
to perceive and indicate the plan, or dis- 
cover his intentions. 

Instead of planning an adventure and 
developing it in such a manner as to ren- 
der it interesting to the denouement, he 
will take his personage or personages at 
a certain period of their existence, and 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


23 


conduct them by natural transitions to the 
following period. He will, in that man- 
ner, indicate how the mind is modified 
under the influence of surrounding cir- 
cumstances, or how sentiments and pas- 
sions are developed; how we love or hate; 
how we combat in all social centers; how 
business interests, money interests, family 
or political interests, continually struggle 
against each other. 

The hability of his plan will, therefore, 
consist, not in the emotion or the charm, 
in an attractive beginning or in an exciting 
catastrophe, but in the skillful grouping 
of constant little facts, from which the 
definitive sense of the work will disengage 
itself. If ten years of life require three 
hundred pages to show its particular 
and characteristic significance in the 
midst of the beings thq^t surrounded it, 
he must know how to eliminate from the 
innumerable and daily small occurrences, 
all those that are useless, and place in a 
strong light, in a special manner, all 


24 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


those that would have remained unseen 
by less keen-sighted observers, and which 
give to his book its weight and value. 

We understand that such a manner of 
composing, so different from the old 
process visible to all eyes, often misleads 
the critic, and he fails to discover all the 
fine, secret and invisible threads em- 
ployed by certain modern artists, instead 
of the unique cord called “Plot.” 

In brief, if the “Novelist” of yesterday 
chose and related the crisis of life, the 
painful states of soul and heart, the novel- 
ist of to-day writes the history of the 
heart, of the soul, and of the intelligence 
in their normal state. To produce the 
effect aimed at, that is, the emotion of 
simple reality, and to disengage the ar- 
tistic teachings that he wishes to draw 
from it, that is, the revelation of what is 
really the contemporaneous man before 
his eyes, he must employ facts of irrefu- 
table and incontestable truth only. 

But, in placing ourselves at the same 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


25 


point of view as these realistic artists, we 
should discuss and contest their theory, 
which may be summed up in these words : 
“Nothing but the truth, and the whole 
truth.” 

Their intention being to disengage the 
philosophy of certain constant and cur- 
rent facts, they must often alter those 
events to th^ advantage of probability 
and to the detriment of truth, for Le vrai 
pent qudque fois nitre pas vraisemblable. 
The realist, if he be an artist, will en- 
deavor, not to show us the common- 
place photography of life, but to give us 
the vision more complete, more striking, 
more convincing than reality itself. 

To relate everything would be im- 
possible, for it would require at least one 
volume for each day, to enumerate the 
multitude of insignificant incidents that 
fill up our existence. 

A choice is thus imposed, — this is the 
first stroke at the theory of the whole 
truth. 


26 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Life, moreover, is composed of things, 
the most different, the most unforeseen, 
the most contradictory, and the most in- 
congruous; it is brutal, without sequel, 
without links, full of inexplicable .catas- 
trophes, illogical and contradictory, which 
should be classed in the chapter of mis- 
cellaneous facts. 

This is why the artist, having chosen 
his theme, will take from this life, encum- 
bered by hazard and futilities, only the 
characteristic details, useful to his subject, 
and reject all the rest. 

Let us take one example among a 
thousand. The number of people who 
die each day, through accident, is con- 
siderable in the world. But can we 
make a tile fall on the head of the prin- 
cipal personage, or throw him under the 
wheels of a carriage in the middle of a 
narrative, under the pretext that we must 
furnish an accident t 

Life, moreover, leaves everything in 
the same conditions, precipitates facts or 


PIERRE ET JEAAT 


27 


drags them on indefinitely. Art, on the 
contrary, consists in using precautions 
and preparations, in managing clever and 
dissimulating transitions, in placing in 
full light, by the mere tact of the com- 
position, the essential events, and to give 
to the others the suitable degree of relief, 
according to their importance, to produce 
the profound sensation of the special 
truth that we wish to demonstrate. 

To make truth, therefore, consists in 
giving the complete illusion of truth, 
according to the ordinary logic of facts, 
and not to servilely transcribe them in 
the pell-mell of their succession. 

I conclude, therefore, that talented 
realists ought rather to call themselves 
illusionists. 

What childishness, moveover, to be- 
lieve in reality since we each carry our 
own in our thoughts and in our organs. 
Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, 
our different tastes, create as many reali- 
ties as there are men in the world. And 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


our minds, which receive the instructions 
of these diversely impressed organs, 
understand, analyze and judge, as if each 
of us belonged to a different race. 

Each of us, therefore, simply creates for 
himself an illusion of the world, a poetic, 
sentimental, joyous, melancholic, filthy or 
lugubrious illusion, according to his nat- 
ure. And the writer has no other mission 
than to faithfully reproduce this illusion, 
with all the tactics of art which he has 
learned, and of which he can dispose. 

Illusion of the beautiful, which is a 
human convention! Illusion of the ugly, 
which is a changing opinion! Illusion of 
the real, never immutable! Illusion of the 
ignoble, which attracts so many beings! 
The great artists are those who impose 
on humanity their particular illusions. 

We should, therefore, never become 
angry against any theory, since each of 
them is simply the generalized expression 
of a temperament which is analyzing 
itself. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


29 


There are two in particular, which have 
often been discussed by opposing one to 
the other, instead of admitting the one 
and the other — that of the novel of pure 
analysis, and that of the objective novel. 
The partisans of analysis demand that the 
writer should undertake to indicate the 
least evolutions of the mind, and all the 
most secret motives that determine our 
actions, while according to the fact itself 
only a secondary importance. 

It is the objective point, a simple limit, 
the pretext of the novel. According to 
their theory we should write those precise 
and dreamy works, wherein imagination 
confounds itself with observation, in the 
manner of a philosopher compiling a psy- 
chological treatise, exposing the causes 
by taking them from their most distant 
origin, giving all the “whys” of all the 
impulses, and discerning all the reactions 
of the soul, acting under the impulsion 
of interests, passions or instincts. 

The partisans of objectivity (what a 


30 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


vile word) pretend, on the contrary, to 
give us the exact representation of what 
takes place in life, carefully avoiding all 
complicated explanations, all disserta- 
tions on motives, and limiting themselves 
to bringing before our eyes the person- 
ages and events. 

For them, psychology should be hid- 
den in the book, as it is hidden in reality 
under the facts of existence. 

The novel conceived in that manner 
gains in interest, in movement, in color 
and in liveliness. 

Thus, instead of explaining at length 
the state of mind of the personage, the 
objective writers seek the action or gesture 
which a man in a determined situation 
would inevitably accomplish in that par- 
ticular state of mind. And they make 
him conduct himself, from one end of the 
volume to the other, in such a manner 
that all his actions, all his movements, 
may be the reflection of his inner- self, of 
all his thoughts, of all his impulses or of 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


31 


all his hesitations. Thus, they hide, in- 
stead of exposing, the psychology, making 
it the carcass of the work, as the invisible 
frame-work of bone is the carcass of the 
human body. The artist who paints our 
portrait does not show our skeleton. 

It also seems to me, that the novel exe- 
cuted in this manner gains in sincerity. 
It is, to begin with, more lifelike, for the 
people whom we see moving around us 
do not tell us what motives they are obey- 
ing. 

We must, then, take into account that if, 
by dint of observing men, we can deter- 
mine their nature with sufficient accuracy 
to foresee the manner in which they would 
act in almost all circumstances, if we can 
say with precision; “Such a man of such 
temperament in such a case would do 
this,” it does not follow that we could 
determine, one by one, all the secret evo- 
lutions of his thoughts; all the mysterious 
solicitations of his instinct, which are not 
similar to our own; all the confused inci- 


32 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


tations of his nature, the organs, the 
nerves, the flesh and the blood of which 
differ from our own. 

Whatever may be the genius of a 
weak, gentle, passionless man, devoted 
solely to science and work, he can never 
transport himself completely enough in 
the soul and body of an exuberant, sen- 
sual and violent man, carried away by his 
desires, and even by his vices, to under- 
stand and indicate the impulses and secret 
sensations of a being so different, even 
though he can foresee and relate all the 
actions of his life. 

In brief, he who writes pure psychol- 
ogy can only substitute himself for all his 
personages in the different situations in 
which he places them, for it is impossi- 
ble for him to change his organs, which 
are the sole intermediaries between 
exterior life and ourselves, imposing on 
us their perceptions, determining our 
sensibilities and creating in us a soul es- 
sentially different from all those that sur- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


33 


round us. Our vision, our knowledg^e of 
the world, acquired by the help of our 
senses, our ideas on life, can only be 
transported in part into all the person- 
ages whose inner and unknown nature 
we pretend to unveil. It is, then, always 
ourselves whom we depict under the 
guise of a king, of an assassin, a thief or 
an honest man, of a courtesan or a nun, 
of a young girl or a market-woman, for 
we are obliged to place the problem 
thus : If I were a king, an assassin, a 
thief, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl or 
a market-woman, what would I do, what 
would I think, how would I act? We, 
therefore, diversify our personages merely 
by changing the age, sex, social situation 
and all the circumstances in the life of 
that “self” whom nature has surrounded 
with an impassable barrier of organs. 

The skill consists in hiding this '"self” 
from the reader under all the divers masks 
that serve to hide it. 

But if, from the point of view of com- 

Pierre et Jean 3 


34 


P TERRE ET JEAN 


plete exactitude, the pure psychological 
analysis is contestable, it may, neverthe- 
less, produce works of art as beautiful as 
any other method of work. To-day 
we have the symbolists. Why not ? 
Their artistic dream is respectable, and 
what is particularly interesting in them is, 
that they know and proclaim the extreme 
difficulty of art. 

In fact, one must be very foolish, very 
audacious, very conceited or very stupid 
to write nowadays. After so many mas- 
ters of such varied natures, of such mani- 
fold genius, what is left to do that has not 
been done, what is left to say that has 
not been said ? Who amongst us can 
boast of having written a page, a phrase, 
that can not be found, almost the same, 
somewhere else. When we read, we, so 
saturated with French writings that our 
entire body gives us the impression of 
being a dough made of words, do we ever 
find a line, a thought, which is not famil- 


PIERRE E:T jean 


35 


iar, of which we have not, at least, a con- 
fused presentiment ? 

The man who only seeks to amuse his 
readers by means already known, writes 
with confidence — in the candor of his 
mediocrity — works destined for the igno- 
rant and idle crowd. But they on whom 
weigh all the past ages of literature, they 
whom nothing satisfies, whom everything 
disgusts, because they dream of some- 
thing higher, to whom everything seems 
already despoilt, whose works always 
give them the impression of a useless and 
common labor, conclude by judging liter- 
ary art as a mysterious and indiscernable 
thing, which a few pages from the great 
masters scarcely unveil to us. 

Twenty verses, twenty phrases, read 
at once thrill us to the heart like a sur- 
prising revelation ; but the verses that 
follow resemble all other verses, the 
prose that flows after it resembles all 
other prose. 

Men of genius are, no doubt, free from 


36 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


these anxieties and torments, because 
they carry within them an irresistible 
creative force. They do not judge them- 
selves. The others, we, who are simply 
tenacious and conscientious workers, can 
struggle against invincible discourage- 
ment only by continued efforts. 

Two men by their simple and luminous 
teachings have given me this force, of 
always attempting — Louis Bouilhet and 
Gustave Flaubert. 

If I speak of them and of myself here, 
it is that their advice, summed up in a 
few lines, may perhaps be useful to.some 
young men who are less confident in 
themselves than beginners in literature 
usually are. 

Bouilhet — whom I knew first, some- 
what intimately, about two years before 
I gained the friendship of Flaubert — by 
dint of repeating to me that a hundred 
verses, perhaps less, sufficed to make the 
reputation of an artist, provided they are 
irreproachable, and contain the essence 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


37 


of talent and the originality of a man, 
even of the second order, made me un- 
derstand that continual work and pro- 
found knowledge of the metier can, on a 
day of lucidity, of power and impulse, by 
the happy meeting of a subject concur- 
ring with the tendencies of our mind, 
give birth to a short work, unique and 
as perfect as we can produce. 

I then understood, that the best known 
writers have seldom left more than one 
volume, and that, before all, we must 
have that chance of finding and discern- 
ing, in the midst of the multitude of 
matters presented to otir choice, that 
which will absorb all our faculties, all our 
talent, all our artistic power. 

Later, Flaubert, whom I sometimes 
met, took a liking to me. I ventured to 
submit a few essays to him. He kindly 
read them, and said: “I do not know if 
you have talent. What you have shown 
me proves that you have a certain degree 
of intelligence, but do not forget this. 


38 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


young man, that talent — to quote the 
words of Buffon — is merely long pa- 
tience. Work ! ” 

I did work, and returned to him fre- 
quently, understanding that I pleased 
him, for he laughingly called me his 
disciple. 

For seven years I wrote verses, I 
wrote stories, I wrote novels, I even 
wrote a detestable drama. Of all this 
nothing remains. The master read all, 
then at breakfast the following Sunday, 
developed his criticism and impressed on 
me, little by little, two or three principles 
which are the total of his long and patient 
teachings. “ If we have an originality, 
he said, we must before all disengage it; 
if we have none, we must acquire one.” 

“ Talent is a long patience.” We must 
look on what we wish to express long 
enough and with enough attention to dis- 
cover an aspect that has not been seen 
and portrayed by another. There is, in 
everything, something unexplored, be- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


39 


cause we always use our eyes with the 
recollection of what has been thought 
before on the subject we are contemplat- 
ing. The least thing contains something 
of the unknown. Let us find it. To 
describe a fire that flames and a tree in a 
field, we must remain facing that fire and 
that tree until they no longer resemble, 
to us, any other tree or fire. 

This is the way we became original. 

Having, moreover, impressed upon me 
that there is not, in the entire world, two 
grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or 
two noses absolutely alike, he forced me 
to describe in a few phrases, a being or an 
object in a manner that would clearly 
particularize it and distinguish it from all 
the other beings or all the other objects 
of the same race or of the same species. 

“ When you pass a grocer sitting at 
his door,” he would say to one, “ajanitor 
smoking his pipe, a cab-stand, show me 
that grocer and that janitor, their attitude, 
all their physical appearance, indicate by 


40 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


the skill of the picture, all their moral 
nature, in such a manner that I cannot 
confound them with any other grocer or 
any other janitor, and let me see by a 
single word in what the cab-horse differs 
from the fifty others that follow and pre- 
cede it.” 

I have developed, elsewhere, his ideas 
on style. They are closely connected 
with the theory of observation that I have 
just explained. 

Whatever may be the thing we wish to 
say, there is but one word to express it, 
one verb to animate it, and but one ad- 
jective to qualify it. We must, then, seek 
until we have discovered this word, this 
verb, and this adjective, and never be 
content with very nearly, never have re- 
course to artifice, however dexterous, or 
to buffooneries of language to avoid 
difficulty. 

We can interpret and indicate the most 
subtile things by applying this line of 
Boileau : 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


41 


“ Dun mot mis en sa place enseigna le 
pouvoir.” 

There is no necessity for the odd, com- 
plicated, limitless and Chinese vocabu- 
lary, which is imposed on us nowadays 
under the name of artistic writing, to im- 
press all the shades of thought ; but we 
must discern with an extreme lucidity, all 
the modifications of the value of a word 
according to the place it occupies. ^Let 
us have fewer nouns, verbs and adjectives 
of almost indiscernible meaning, but more 
of different phrases, diversely constructed, 
ingeniously turned, full of sonority and 
clever rhythms. Let us strive to be ex- 
cellent stylists, rather than mere col- 
lectors of rare terms. 

It is, in fact, more difficult to turn the 
phrase at our will, to make it say every- 
thing, even what it does not express, to 
fill it with hidden meanings, secret and 
not formulated intentions, than to invent 
new expressions, or seek in the depths of 
old forgotten books all those which have 


42 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


lost their use and signification, and which 
are for us like dead verbs. 

The French language, moreover, is a 
pure water which affected writers never 
have and never can trouble. Each cen- 
tury has thrown into this limpid current, 
its styles, its pretentious archai'sme, and 
its preciosities, and nothing of these use- 
less attempts, of these powerless efforts 
now survive. The nature of this is to be 
clear, logical and nervous. It does not 
allow itself to be weakened, obscured or 
corrupted. 

Those who to-day draw characters, 
without attention to abstract terms, those 
who pour rain or hail on the cleanness of 
window panes, can also cast stones at the . 
simplicity of their fellow-laborers! They 
may, perhaps, strike their confreres, who 
have a body, but they cannot reach sim- 
plicity, which has none. 

Guy de Maupassant. 

La Guillette, fitretat, September, 1887. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


CHAPTER 1. 

“Zut!” suddenly cried old Roland, 
furiously drawing in his line over the 
bow of the boat, where he had sat 
motionless for over a quarter of an hour, 
with his eyes fixed intently on the waters. 
“Not even a bite since noon.” 

“Well! Well! Gerome !” exclaimed 
Madame Roland, starting up from her 
nap in the stern of the boat, where she 
was seated beside Mme. Rosemilly, who 
had been invited to this fishing party. 

“They don’t bite any more,” growled 
the old man, impatiently. “ Men should 
always go fishing by themselves; it takes 
women too long to get ready.” 

His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who 
were seated, one on the larboard, and 
the other on the starboard side, each 

43 


44 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


with a line rolled around his index fin- 
ger, laughed boisterously at their father’s 
impatience, while Jean called out to him: 

“You are not very flattering to our 
guest, father.” 

“ I beg your pardon, Madame Rose- 
milly,” stammered the old man, con- 
fusedly, “ but I am made that way. I 
invite ladies because I enjoy their com- 
pany, and then, as soon as I feel the 
water under me, I only think of fishing,” 

“ You have, nevertheless, quite a num- 
ber of fine fish, ” murmured Mme. Roland, 
now fully awakened, and looking tenderly 
at the vast expanse of sky and water. 

But her husband shook his head nega- 
tively, casting, however, a satisfied look 
at the basket in which the fish captured 
by the three men were still palpitating 
with life; their extended fins and the soft 
noise of their slippery scales as they came 
in contact, giving evidence of their power- 
less and feeble efforts to escape from the 
deadly atmosphere. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


45 


Old Roland placed the basket between 
his knees, tipped it forward to see those in 
the bottom, thereby increasing their ago- 
nizing struggles; and a strong odor from 
their bodies, mingled with the wholesome 
smell of sea water, came up from the well- 
filled basket. 

The old fisherman inhaled this delight- 
edly, as if they were roses, and exclaim- 
ing: 

“ How nice and fresh they are! ” then 
continued : “ How many did you catch. 
Doctor? ” 

“Oh! not many; three or four only,” 
replied Pierre, his elder son, a man of 
thirty, with black side whiskers, trimmed 
like those of a magistrate, and without 
moustache or imperial. 

“ And you, Jean ?” he asked, turning to 
his younger son. 

Jean, a tall fair-haired young man, 
with thick whiskers, and much younger 
than his brother, smiled as he murmured: 
“About as many as Pierre, four or five.” 


46 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


They repeated this lie each time they 
went out fishing with their father, who 
was thus easily convinced that he was 
the most skillful of fishermen, and was 
delighted beyond measure. 

“ I will never again try to fish after 
noon,” he declared, as he finished rolling 
his line about an oar; and then folding his 
arms, he added, impressively: ‘‘After ten 
o’clock it is a waste of time, the rascals 
will not bite, but just lie there and bask 
in the sun.” 

And the old man looked around him 
on the sea, with a satisfied air of proprie- 
torship. 

M. Roland was a retired Parisian jew- 
eler, whom an inordinate love for sailing 
and fishing, had torn from the counter as 
soon as he had amassed a modest com- 
petency. 

He settled at Havre, purchased a 
yacht, and became an amateur sailor. 
His two sons, Pierre and Jean, remained 
in Paris to continue their studies, coming 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


47 


from time to time during their holidays, 
to share their father’s pastime. 

After leaving college, Pierre, who was 
five years older than Jean, had been suc- 
cessively attracted toward various pro- 
fessions, and had tried half a dozen, one 
after the other, but soon gave them up in 
disgust, to dash himself into new hopes. 

Finally, he adopted the study of medi- 
cine, and worked with so much ardor that 
he had just received the title of doctor, 
after a very short course of studies, having 
obtained a dispensation of time from the 
minister. He was excitable, intelligent, 
changeable and tenacious ; his mind filled 
with chimeras and philosophical ideas. 

Jean, who was as fair as his brother 
was dark, as calm and sweet-tempered as 
he was hasty and resentful, had quietly 
settled down to the study of law, and had 
obtained his diploma as a lawyer, at the 
same time that Pierre had received his as 
a doctor. 

Both were now at home for a few 


48 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


weeks of rest, with the intention of, per- 
haps, remaining at Havre, if satisfactory 
arrangements could be made. 

But a vague jealousy; one of those 
slumbering jealousies that grow almost 
invisibly between brothers or sisters until 
their maturity, and bursts forth on the 
occasion of a marriage, or at some unex- 
pected good fortune befalling one of 
them, had kept alive a fraternal and inof- 
fensive enmity. They loved, but sus- 
pected each other. Pierre, who was five 
years of age when Jean was born, had 
looked, with the hostility of a spoilt child, 
on this little being that had so suddenly 
appeared in the arms of his father and 
mother, and was so loved and caressed 
by them. 

From infancy, Jean had been a model 
of gentleness and good humor ; and, 
little by little, Pierre had become irritated 
at the incessant praises bestowed on this 
overgrown boy, whose gentleness and 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


49 


good nature seemed but pusillanimity 
and stupidity. 

His parents, easy-going people who 
dreamed of mediocre but honorable po- 
sitions for their sons, reproached his in- 
decisions and enthusiasms, his abortive 
attempts and his useless impulses toward 
liberal ideas and decorative professions. 

Since he had attained manhood they 
no longer said; “Look at Jean and imi- 
tate him !” but each time that he heard 
them repeat: “Jean has done this,” or 
“Jean has done that,” he well understood 
the allusions hidden in their words. 

Their mother, an economical, orderly 
woman, a little sentimental, and gifted 
with the tender heart of a botirgeoise, tried 
continually to appease the little rivalries 
born each day between her sons, and 
which sprung from the ordinary details 
of their every-day life. A slight event, 
moreover, just now troubled her tran- 
quillity, and she feared a complication. 
During the previous winter, while her 

Pierre et Jean 4 


50 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


sons were still pursuing their studies in 
Paris, she had formed the acquaintance 
of Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a sea 
captain who had died at sea two years 
before. 

Mme. Rosemilly was twenty-three 
years of age, an excellent woman, who 
knew the world through instinct, as if she 
had seen and undergone, understood and 
weighed all possible contingencies, judg- 
ing everything with a strict and clear 
perception. She had become a frequent 
visitor at the home of the Rolands, where 
she betook herself and her embroidery 
almost every evening, to chat over a cup 
of tea. 

M. Roland’s love of maritime subjects 
incessantly incited him to question their 
new friend about the departed captain, 
and she spoke of him, of his voyages, 
and his sailor’s yarns without embarrass- 
ment, and like a reasonable and resigned 
woman, who loves life and respects the 
dead. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


51 


On their return, the two sons, finding 
this pretty widow installed in the house, 
had at once began to court her, not so 
much through the desire of wooing her as 
through the wish of supplanting each 
other. 

Their prudent and practical mother 
sincerely hoped that one of them should 
win her, as the young woman was rich; 
but at the same time she hoped, also, 
the other would not be grieved. 

Mme. Rosemilly was a blonde, with blue 
eyes, a profusion of fluffy hair that waved 
in the lightest breeze, and an air of bold- 
ness and impudence that ill-accorded with 
the methodical wisdom of her judgment. 

She already seemed to prefer Jean, at- 
tracted to him by a similarity of nature. 
This preference, however, showed itself 
only in an almost imperceptible difference 
in the voice and look, and in that she 
sometimes took his advice 

She seemed to guess beforehand that 
Jean’s opinion would fortify her own, 


52 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


while the opinion of Pierre would always 
differ fatally. When she spoke to the 
Doctor about his political, artistic, philo- 
sophical, or moral ideas, she would refer to 
them as “Your idle trash.” He would 
then look at her with the cold look of a 
magistrate who instigates a suit against 
women, all women — those poor beings. 

Before the return of his sons, old 
Roland had never invited her or his wife 
to take part in his fishing excursions, for 
he loved to set off before daybreak with 
Captain Beausire, a retired sea captain, 
whom he met one day while watching the 
rising tide, and who had since become an 
intimate friend. Their only companion 
was Papagris, an old sailor, surnamed 
Jean Bart, who had charge of the yacht. 

But one evening of the preceding 
week, Madame Rosemilly, who was din- 
ing with the Rolands, had remarked that 
“ fishing must be a very pleasant pas- 
time, indeed.” And the old jeweler, 
flattered in his ruling passion, and seized 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


53 


with the desire of communicating it, and 
making converts in his belief, had ex- 
claimed : 

“ Would you like to come ? 

“Why, yes, I would, indeed;” replied 
the young widow, smiling. 

“Tuesday next?” he asked, eagerly. 

“ Yes* Tuesday next,” she assented. 

“You must be ready to start at five 
o’clock in the morning,” he declared. 

“ Oh! why that is impossible 1 ” she ex- 
claimed, in horror. 

The old man was disappointed, and 
began suddenly to doubt her fancy for 
the sport. 

“What time will you be ready?” he 
asked, his ardor somewhat cooled. 

“Why nine o’clock,” she stam- 

mered. 

“ Not before ? ” he asked, anxiously. 

“Not before,” she repeated; “even 
that is too early.” 

The old man hesitated. He was sure 
they would catch nothing, for if the sun 


54 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


was hot the fish would not bite ; but the 
two brothers took the matter into their 
own hands and org’anized the party before 
parting with their guest that evening. 

Accordingly, on the following Tuesday, 
the Perle had cast anchor under the white 
rocks of the '‘'"cap de la HiveP and they 
had fished with some success till noon; 
they had then rested and then fished 
again without catching anything. Old 
man Roland now perceived, when too late, 
that Mme. Rosemilly in truth cared for 
nothing but the sail on the sea, and see- 
ing that the lines were no longer agitated, 
he had in a moment of unreasonable im- 
patience given vent to an energetic “ Zut; ” 
addressed as much to the indifferent 
widow as to the wary fish. 

He was now looking at the captured 
fish, his fish, with the delighted joy of a 
miser; then, as he raised his eyes to the 
sky, he saw that the sun was setting. 

“ Well, boys, suppose we go toward the 
shore a bit,” said he. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


55 


They both withdrew their lines from 
the water and carefully imbedding the 
hooks in the corks, proceeded to wrap 
their lines around them. 

Roland was standing up, scanning the 
horizon with the air of a sea-captain. 

“No more wind,” he declared; “we 
must row, boys.” Then, pointing sud- 
denly to the north, he cried: 

“ There! there is the Southampton 
packet.” 

Over the flat ocean, stretching out like 
an immense glittering blue cloth, with 
reflections of gold and fire, appeared a 
black cloud on the rosy sky in the direc- 
tion indicated; and beneath this cloud 
could be seen the outlines of a steamer, 
looking so small in the distance. 

To the south could be seen innumer- 
able other clouds of smoke, all floating in 
the direction of Havre, the white outlines 
of which, with its light-house standing like 
an up-ended horn, could be scarcely dis- 
tinguished from the yacht. 


56 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Isn’t the Normandie due to-day? ” 
asked Roland. 

“Yes, father,” replied Jean. 

“ Hand me my telescope,” rejoined 
the old man; “ I believe that is she over 
there.” 

He pulled out the brass tube to its full 
length, then adjusted it to his eye, and 
swept the horizon. 

“ Y es, yes, it is she,” he suddenly cried, 
in rapture at having seen her. “ I recog- 
nize her two stacks. Would you like to 
look, Mme. Rosemilly? ” 

She took the telescope and turned it 
in the direction of the transatlantic liner 
without succeeding, no doubt, in locating 
it, for she saw nothing; nothing but blue 
encircled in bright colors; an entirely 
round rainbow, which then changed into 
all kinds of odd and strange things, and 
partial eclipses that made her dizzy. 

“ I have never known how to use that 
instrument,” she said, as she handed it 
back. “ My husband, who spent hours at 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


57 


the window watching passing ships, was 
often angry with me on account of my 
stupidity.” 

“ There must be something the matter 
with your sight,” growled old Roland, 
quite vexed, “for my glass is an excellent 
one; ” then, turning to his wife, he asked, 
“Would you like to look through it?” 

“No, thank you! I know before hand 
that it would be useless,” she replied. 

Mme. Roland, a woman of forty-eight, 
although she did not show her years, 
seemed to enjoy this sail on the ocean 
and the sun-set, more than, any of the 
others. 

Her brown hair was streaked with sil- 
ver; her face bore an expression of tran- 
quillity and kindness, and a look of happi- 
ness that was good to behold. Accord- 
ing to her son, Pierre, she knew the value 
of money, but this did not prevent her 
from tasting the charms of revery. She 
loved reading, romance and poetry, not 
for their artistic value, but because of 


58 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


the tender and melancholy thoughts they 
awakened in her. A verse, often com- 
mon-place, or even bad, caused a vibra- 
tion of that little chord — as she called 
it — giving her the sensation of a mys- 
terious desire almost realized. She took 
pleasure in these light emotions that 
somewhat ruffled her soul, which was 
always as well balanced as a well-kept 
ledger. 

Since their arrival at Havre she had 
grown stouter, and her slender and sup- 
ple waist of other days had been visibly 
affected. 

She was delighted with this excursion 
on the sea. M. Roland, though not a 
bad husband, was sometimes harsh, in 
the manner of a despot, who rules with- 
out anger and without hatred, but whose 
word is equivalent to a command. Before 
strangers he curbed his temper, but in 
his family he made terrible scenes, al- 
though he feared everybody. His wife, 
through a horror of quarrels and useless 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


59 


explanations, always submitted, and 
never asked for anything; therefore, al- 
though loving the sea deeply, she had 
never requested permission to accom- 
pany him. 

She now abandoned herself entirely to 
the rare pleasures of the sea. The soft 
gliding over the water and the caress of 
the soft breeze filled her heart with de- 
light. She thought neither of the past 
nor the future, forgetting her dreams and 
her hopes; and it seemed to her that her 
heart, like her body, was floating over 
some smooth surface, some delicious 
fluid that lulled and rocked her into 
oblivion. 

When the father gave the command: 
'‘Make for the shore! ” she smiled to see 
her sons, her two grown-up sons, taking 
off their coats and rolling up their shirt 
sleeves. 

Pierre, who was nearest to the two 
women, took the starboard oar, while 
Jean took the larboard, and both awaited 


6o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


the cry of the captain, “forward! ” the 
old man being very particular to see that 
the maneuvers were regularly executed. 

Together they dipped their oars, each 
giving a vigorous stroke, and the contest 
began. They had used the sails in the 
morning, but the wind had now gone 
down, and the spirit of rivalry was sud- 
denly awakened in the two brothers at 
the prospect of measuring their strength 
against each other. 

When they went fishing alone, with their 
father, they rowed without any one at the 
rudder, for Roland, while preparing the 
lines, would direct them by a gesture or 
a word — “Ease off, Jean,” — “Bend to 
it Pierre,” — he would cry; or, “Forward 
(?«^,forward both;” — “A little more muscle 
there.” The one who had been dream- 
ing would then pull harder, while the 
ambitious one would become less ardent, 
and the boat would soon resume its 
proper course. 

This day they were determined to test 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


6i 


their strength. Pierre’s arms were hairy, 
thin and nervous, while Jean’s were 
plump, white and rosy, with a bunch of 
muscle that rolled under the skin. 

Pierre had the advantage at first. His 
teeth clinched, his brow contracted, his 
hands clutching the oar firmly, bending 
it its full length at each stroke," he swayed 
the Perle to one side. Old Roland, 
from his station in the bow, made him- 
self hoarse repeating “Ease off, one;" 
“Bend to it, two;" But number one 
only redoubled his efforts, and number 
two was powerless to respond to those 
furious strokes. 

Finally, the captain gave the order, 
“Stop!” The two oars were raised to- 
gether, and Jean was ordered to pull 
alone for a few instants. From that mo- 
ment Jean kept the advantage, becoming 
animated and warmed to the work, while 
Pierre, breathless and panting from his 
vigorous efforts, was growing steadily 
weaker, and his strength was soon ex- 


62 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


hausted. Four times, in succession, old 
Roland was forced to order a “stop,” to 
permit the elder brother to regain his 
breath, and to right the boat! 

“ I can not imagine what has come over 
me. I feel a spasm at my heart,” mut- 
tered the humiliated and enraged Doctor, 
as the perspiration streamed from his 
brow down his pale cheeks. “ I was well 
when we started, but the pain has para- 
lyzed my arms.” 

“Shall I take the two oars?” asked 
Jean. 

“No, thank you; it will pass away,” 
said Pierre, impatiently. 

“ Look here, Pierre,” said his mother, 
“ why do you put yourself in such a state; 
you are not a child ? ” 

He shrugged his shoulders and again 
took up his oar. 

Mme Rosemilly seemed to have neither 
seen, heard nor understood anything. 
At each stroke her little blonde head 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


63 


made a sudden backward movement that 
raised the pretty hair from her temples. 

“ There ! look at the Prince Albert, it 
is catching up with us,” cried old Roland; 
and everybody turned to look at the 
Southampton packet, bearing down upon 
them at full speed. It was long and low, 
with its two chimneys inclined backward, 
and its two yellow paddle-boxes round 
and bulging like cheeks ; its decks were 
crowded with passengers and open um- 
brellas. Its rapid, noisy wheels beating 
the water into foam, gave it the appearance 
of a hurried courier ; and the straight bow 
cutting through the water raised narrow 
transparent billows that dashed against 
its sides. 

As it passed near the Perle, old Roland 
raised his hat, the two women waved 
their handkerchiefs, and these salutes 
were responded to by the waving of half 
a dozen umbrellas on the packet that was 
now fast disappearing, leaving behind it 
on the calm and glittering surface of the 


64 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


sea, innumerable little ripples shining like 
silver in the setting sun. 

From all points of the horizon could 
be seen many ships, crowned with a cloud 
of smoke and directed toward the white 
pier, that swallowed them, one by one 
like an immense mouth. The fishing 
yachts, the large sailing vessels, with their 
light spars gliding against the sky, towed 
by almost imperceptible tugs, all made 
for this devouring ogre, who, from time 
to time, seeming surfeited, cast back to 
the open sea another fleet of packets, 
brigs, schooners, and full-rigged ships. 
The busy steamers glided away to the 
right and left on the flat bosom of the 
ocean, while the sailing vessels, aban- 
doned by the tugs that had towed them, 
remained motionless for a time, dressing 
up to the mast-head in white or brown 
canvas, that seemed red in the evening 
glow. 

“Heavens! how beautiful is the sea,” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


65 


murmured Mme. Roland, with half-closed 
,eyes. 

“Yes, but it sometimes does a great 
deal of harm, ” said Mme. Rosemilly, with 
a prolonged sigh, that, however, contained 
nothing of sadness. 

“ There comes the Nor^nandie, ” cried 
old Roland. “Whata monster she is, eh? ” 

Then he explained the other shore far, 
far away, the other side of the mouth of 
the Seine — “a mouth twenty kilometers 
wide! ” he exclaimed. He pointed out 
Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc, Ar- 
romanches, the river Caen, and the rocks 
of Calvados, which render navigation to 
Cherbourg so dangerous. Then he spoke 
of the shifting banks of sand in the Seine 
that move with every tide and deceive 
even the pilots of Quilleboeuf, unless 
they examine the channel every day. 
He then showed them how the Havre 
separated lower from upper Normandy. 
In lower Normandy the flat country 
sloped to the sea in pastures, prairies 

Pierre et Jean 5 


66 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


and fields. The coast of upper Nor- 
mandy, on the contrary, was a steep 
cliff, indented, abrupt, rugged and impos- 
ing, forming an immense white wall to 
Dunkerque, in every indentation of which 
was hidden a village or a port — Etre- 
tat, Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Le-Treport, 
Dieppe, etc. 

The two women no longer listened to 
him ; moved by the view of this ocean cov- 
ered with ships that wandered about like 
wild beasts around their den, awed by this 
vast horizon of land and water, and si- 
lenced by the peaceful and magnificent 
sunset; Roland alone talked incessantly; 
he was one of those whom nothing trou- 
bles, but the more sensitive women, with- 
out knowing why, felt irritated by the noise 
of this useless voice. 

Pierre and Jean, now calmed, were 
rowing leisurely, and the Perle, so small 
beside the big ships, continued its course 
toward the port. 

When they reached the quay, the 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


67 


sailor Papagris, who was awaiting them, 
assisted the ladies ashore, and they 
mixed with the crowd that assembles on 
the quay each day at high tide. 

The two ladies walked on, followed by 
the three men. They went up the Rue 
de Paris, stopping frequently to admire 
a bonnet or a jewel in a shop window, 
and then walked on discussing what they 
had seen. 

When they reached the Bourse, Roland 
stopped to contemplate — as he never 
failed to do each day — a succession of 
basins filled with ships, whose enormous 
hulls were packed together four or five 
rows deep. All these innumerable masts, 
with their yards, ropes and pennons, 
on this stretch of several kilometers of 
quays, gave to this opening into the mid- 
dle of the city the aspect of a great dead 
forest. Above this leafless forest the 
sea-gulls circled, ready to descend like a 
falling stone on the debris that fell into 
the water; and a sailor who was attaching 


68 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


a pulley to the extremity of a yard-arm, 
looked like a boy searching for birds- 
nests in a tree. 

“ Will you dine with us, that we may 
have the pleasure of finishing the' day 
together ?” asked Mme. Roland of Mme. 
Rosemilly. 

“With pleasure,” said the young 
widow, in delight, “it would be so lone- 
some for me to spend the evening alone.” 

“ There! the widow is trying to ingrati- 
ate herself now,” murmured Pierre, who 
felt hurt by the indifference of the young 
woman. 

Since the last few days he always 
called her “the widow.” This annoyed 
Jean, simply through the malicious and 
insulting tone in which it was uttered. 

After this the silence remained un- 
broken until the three men reached their 
home. It was a low, narrow house on 
the Rue Belle Normande, consisting of 
a basement and two low stories. The 
bell was answered by the servant Jose- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


69 


phine, a cheap country servant of nine- 
teen years, who was endowed to excess 
with that air of astonishment and stupid- 
ity that belongs exclusively to peasants. 
She opened the door, reclosed it, ascended 
the stairs behind the family with no more 
expression on her countenance than if 
she had been a dummy, but, as they 
reached the parlor, she announced tri- 
umphantly: “A gentleman called three 
times ! ” 

“Who was he?” asked old‘ Roland, 
with the oath he never failed to hurl at 
the inoffending servant on all occasions. 

“A gentleman from the notary,” said 
the unruffled servant, who was never dis- 
turbed by these burst of anger from her 
master. 

“ What notary ? ” thundered old Ro- 
land. 

“ Why, Mr. Canu, of course,” she an- 
swered, stupidly. 

“And what did the gentleman say?” 
he growled, fiercely. 


70 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ That Mister Canu would come him- 
self this evening,” she replied. 

M. Lecanu was the notary and friend 
of old Roland, and transacted all his 
business for him. It must, indeed, have 
been a very urgent and important busi- 
ness when he announced his visit before- 
hand ; and the four Rolands looked at 
each other, evidently troubled — as any- 
body with a modest fortune would natur- 
ally be — by the intervention of their 
notary, it awakened in them a host of 
ideas, of contracts, of inheritances, of law- 
suits, and of all desirable and undesirable 
things. 

“What, can it be?” murmured old 
Roland after a short silence. 

“ I am sure it must be an inheritance,” 
laughed Mme. Rosemilly, “for I bring 
luck to my friends.” 

But they could think of no relative 
whose death might enrich them. 

Mme. Roland, who was gifted with an 
excellent memory for relationships, at 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


71 


once set about hunting up the alliances 
on both sides of the family ; tracing the 
filiations and following out the branches 
of cousinships. 

" Do you remember, father ” — she 
called her husband father in the house, 
and sometimes M. Roland before stran- 
gers — “ Do you remember,” she said, as 
she removed her bonnet, “who Joseph 
Lebru’s second wife was?” 

“Yes, she was a Dumeuil girl, the 
daughter of a paper-hanger,” replied he. 

“Had they any children?” she con- 
tinued. 

“ I should say so! four or five, at least,” 
he replied. 

“ Then it cannot be from there! ” she 
sighed. 

She was already animated in this 
search, and clung to the hope that a little 
good luck would fall to them from heaven. 
But Pierre, who loved his mother very 
much, and feared the little disappoint- 
ment and sadness of a disillusion of the 


72 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


news., instead of being good was the con- 
trary, interrupted her reveries. 

“ Do not trouble yourself, mother,” 
said he, “there are no more rich uncles 
in America. I am rather inclined to 
think that it is relative to a marriage 
settlement for Jean.” 

This idea was a surprise to all, and 
Jean, who was terribly vexed that this 
should be said in the presence of Mme. 
Rosemilly, retorted: 

“Why for me any more than for your- 
self? The supposition is quite contest- 
able. You are the elder, and one would 
naturally suppose you would be the first 
to marry! Besides, I have no intention 
of marrying.” 

“You are then a lover,” laughed Pierre 
sarcastically. 

“ Is it necsssary to be a lover,” replied 
the other angrily, “to say that one does 
not want to marry yet? ” 

“Ah, good! The ‘ yet ’ explains all; 
you are waiting.” 


PIERRE ET jean 


73 


“ Admit that I am waiting, then, if you 
wish. ” 

But old Roland, who had been listen- 
ing and reflecting, suddenly found the 
most reasonable solution to the mystery. 

“ Humph!” he exclaimed, “how stupid 
of us to bother our brains about it. M. 
Lecanu is a friend of ours; he knows 
that Pierre and Jean are looking for 
suitable offices, and he has probably found 
one that might do. ” 

This was so very simple and probable 
that they were all convinced that he must 
be right. 

The servant now announced dinner, 
and they all hurried away to prepare for 
that meal. 

Ten minutes later they reassembled in 
the dining-room, in the basement. 

They spoke but little at first, but after 
a few minutes Roland was again over- 
come by astonishment at the proposed 
visit of the notary. Why had he not 
written? Why had he sent his clerk 


74 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


three times? And why was he ■''coming 
himself? he kept repeating. 

Pierre thought this all very natural. 

“ He undoubtedly required aij imme- 
diate answer, and he might have some 
confidential clause to communicate that 
he did not care to write. ” 

But they remained preoccupied, and it 
must be admitted that they all regretted 
their invitation to this stranger, whose 
presence embarrassed their discussions 
and restrained them from forming plans. 

They had just returned to the parlor 
when the notary was announced. 

“Good evening, dear maitre!” ex- 
claimed Roland, grasping him by the 
hand. 

He always addressed M. Lecanu by 
the title of maitre, which always precedes 
the name of a notary. 

“I must go, I am quite tired,” said 
Mme. Rosemilly, rising from her seat. 

They made a feeble attempt to detain 
her, but she insisted, and took her depart- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


75 


ure without any of the three men offer- 
ing to escort her, as was their usual 
habit. 

“Will you have a cup of coffee, Mon- 
sieur?” asked Mme. Roland politely. 

“ No, thank you, I have just left the 
dinner-table,” he replied. 

“ A cup of tea then ? ” she asked, 
eagerly. 

“ Let us proceed to business first,” 
said the notary, “and I will take it after- 
ward.” 

In the profound silence that followed 
these words, could be plainly heard the 
even ticking of the clock and the noise of 
the dishes being washed by the servant, 
who was even too stupid to listen at the 
door. 

“ Did you know a certain M. Marechal, 
Leon Marechal, of Paris?” began the no- 
tary. 

“ Indeed we did!” exclaimed the hus- 
band and wife together. 


76 


PIEE'RE ET JEAN 


“ He was one of your friends? ” he said, 
interrogatively. 

“The best of friends; but an enthusi- 
astic Parisian who never leaves the boule- 
vard,” declared Roland. “He is chief 
clerk of the bureau of finance. I have 
not seen him since I left Paris, and we 
have ceased to write to each other long 
ago. You know how it is when we live 
at a distance from each other — ” 

“ M. Marechal is dead! ” interposed the 
notary gravely. 

The husband and wife greeted this intel- 
ligence with that gesture of surprise which 
is always instantaneous and which con- 
veys either assumed or genuine sorrow. 

“ My brother notary in Paris,” con- 
tinued M. Lecanu, “ has just communi- 
cated to me the principal condition of his 
will, by which he makes your son Jean, 
M. Jean Roland, his sole heir.” 

The astonishment caused by this an- 
nouncement was so great that for a mo- 
ment no one could say a word. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


77 


Mme. Roland was the first to master 
her emotion. 

“Poor Leon — our poor friend — mon- 
Dieu — mon Dieu — and he is dead !” she 
murmured. 

Tears came to her eyes, those silent 
tears of women, drops of anguish that 
come from the heart and flow on the 
cheeks, seeming so sorrowful because 
they are so pure. 

But Roland was thinking less of the 
bitterness of their loss than of the hopes 
it brought. However, he did not dare ask 
immediately for further information on 
the conditions of the will and the 
amount of the fortune, fearing to appear 
too eager ; but he led up to the interest- 
ing question by asking, “And what did 
poor Marechal die of?” 

“I only know that he died without 
direct heirs,” said the notary, “and has 
left his entire fortune, an income of 
twenty thousand francs, to your second 
son, whom he had known since his birth, 


78 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


and whom he judged worthy of this 
legacy. In default of M. Jean’s accept- 
ance, the entire fortune reverts to aban- 
doned children.” 

Old Roland could no longer dissimu- 
late his joy, and exclaimed, 

"Sacristi ! there’s a friendly thought for 
you. And, indeed, if I had no direct heirs 
I would certainly have remembered that 
true friend.” 

“ I am very happy,” said the notary, 
smiling, “ to have announced you this 
good fortune myself. It is always a 
pleasure to bring good news to your 
friends.” 

He had not even stopped to think that 
this good news was the death of a friend, 
of Roland’s best friend ; for even the old 
man himself had suddenly forgotten the 
intimacy he had announced with so much 
conviction a few moments before. 

Mme. Roland and her sons alone 
retained an appearance of sadness. She 
was still weeping softly, wiping her eyes 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


79 


in her handkerchief, which she afterward 
placed over her mouth to stifle her sobs. 

“ He was a good and kind man,” mur- 
mured the young doctor, “ he often 
invited my brother and myself' to dine 
with him.” 

Jean, with his bright eyes dilated, was 
absently tugging at his beard with his 
right hand, allowing it to slip slowly 
through his fingers. 

Twice he opened his lips to utter some 
suitable phrase, but in vain; and, after 
searching for a long time, all he could find 
to say was : 

“ He loved me very much indeed, and 
always kissed me when we met.” 

But the thoughts of the father were 
galloping, galloping around this an- 
nounced inheritance, already acquired; 
this money hidden behind the door, that 
would come so soon, to-morrow, at the 
word of acceptance. 

“ Are there no possible difficulties ? — - 


8o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


any lawsuits — or contestations?” he 
asked, anxiously. 

“None,” replied the notary. “I have 
been notified that everything is clear, and 
we only, await M. Jean’s acceptance.” 

“ The fortune is then ready ? — all for- 
malities gone through ” continued the 
old man, eagerly. 

“All!” replied the notary, briefly. 

A sort of vague instinctive shame at 
his eagerness for information made him 
add, quickly: “You understand that I 
merely ask these things to save my son 
any unexpected difificulties. Sometimes 
there are debts, embarrassing conditions, 
or I know not what, and we get into in- 
extricable entanglements. In fact, I am 
not the interested party, but only ask to 
save the Tittle one’ trouble.” 

In the family Jean was always called 
the “ little one,” although he was larger 
than his brother. 

Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to 
awaken from a dream, to remember 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


8i 


something heard long, long ago; almost 
forgotten, in fact, and of which she was 
not quite certain, moreover. 

“Did you not say that our poor Mard- 
chal had left his fortune to my little Jean? " 
she said inquiringly. 

“ Yes, Madame.” 

“It makes me very happy, for it proves 
that he loved us,” she added, simply. 

“Do you wish my son to sign the 
acceptance at once, my maitre,” said 
old Roland, starting up. 

“No— no — Monsieur Roland. Not 
now, to-morrow. Would it be conven- 
ient for you to call at my office at two 
o’clock in the afternoon? ” 

“Why, yes! certainly, certainly,” as- 
sented Roland, eagerly. 

Then Madame Roland arose and, smil- 
ing through her tears, laid her hand on 
the notary’s arm, looking at him with the 
tender look of a grateful mother, and 
asked: “And that cup of tea. Monsieur 
Lecanu? ” 

Pierre et Jean 6 


82 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


“\ will take it with pleasure now, 
madame,” said the notary. 

The servant first brought in some of 
those dry cakes put up in deep tin boxes; 
that insipid and brittle English pastry 
that seems baked for the beak of a parrot, 
and soldered up in metal boxes for a 
voyage around the world. She then 
went out in search of gray napkins, folded 
carefully into small squares, those tea 
napkins that are never washed in busy 
families. She returned a third time with 
the sugar-bowl and cups ; then went out 
to boil the water, while the company 
patiently waited. 

They were all too much preoccupied to 
think of anything to say. Mme. Roland 
alone found common-place topics. She 
chatted about their fishing excursion, 
praising the Perle and Mme. Rosemilly. 

“ Charming, charming,” repeated the 
notary. 

Roland, with his back to the chimney, 
as if warming himself on a cold winter 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


83 


night, his hands thrust deeply into his 
pockets, and his lips puckered as if about 
to whistle, could scarcely repress his im- 
perious desire of giving vent to his joy. 

The two brothers, seated one on each 
side of the central table, with legs crossed, 
were looking fixedly before them, both in 
the same attitude, but filled with different 
thoughts. 

The tea was finally brought in. The 
notary, after dropping a lump of sugar 
into his cup, and crumbling one of the 
little cakes into his tea — it being too 
hard to bite through — drank in silence. 
Then he arose, shook hands with every- 
body, and prepared to go. 

“It is understood, then,” said Roland, 
as he accompanied him to the door, “to- 
morrow, at two o’clock, at your office.” 

“Yes, to-morrow, at two o’clock,” re- 
peated the notary. 

After the notary’s departure there was 
another silence; then old Roland, coming 
up to Jean, who had not yet found a 


84 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


word to say, and, slapping him on the 
shoulders, cried gaily: 

“ Well, you rascal, ain’t you going to 
kiss me ? ” 

“ I was not aware that it was indispen- 
sable,” said Jean, smiling, and kissing 
him. 

But the old man was wild with delight. 
He walked about, drumming on the furni- 
ture with his awkward fingers, pivoting 
on his heels, and repeating: 

“ What luck! what luck! Here is a 
stroke of fortune.” 

“Was Marechal a very old friend of 
yours ?” asked Pierre, suddenly. 

“ Indeed he was, and he always spent 
his evenings at our house. But you 
must remember that he always brought 
you home on your weekly holiday from 
college, and took you back after dinner. 
Why it was he who went after the doctor 
the morning Jean was born. He was 
breakfasting with us when your mother 
was taken sick He understood at once 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


85 


what the matter was, and, in his haste, 
took my hat instead of his own. I re- 
member this very well, for we often 
laughed about it afterward. It is even 
probable that he remembered this occur- 
rence when he was d.ying, and, having no 
direct heir, said to himself : “ As I assisted 
at the birth of that little fellow, I will leave 
him my fortune.” 

Mme. Roland, seeming lost in recollec- 
tions of the past, murmured from the 
depths of her easy chair, as if thinking 
aloud : 

“ Ah! he was a true friend, very faith- 
ful and devoted. Indeed, such friends 
are few nowadays.” 

“ I am going out for a walk,” said Jean, 
abruptly. 

His father was astonished and wished 
to detain him ; they had had no time to 
talk, form any projects, or come to any 
understanding. But the young man in- 
sisted, pleading an appointment as a pre- 
text ; besides there would be time enough 


86 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


to talk the matter over before he came 
into possession of the inheritance. 

And he went out, anxious to be alone, 
to reflect. Pierre soon after declared his 
intention of taking a stroll also, and fol- 
lowed his brother in a few minutes. 

As soon as he was alone with his wife 
old Roland caught her in his arms, kissed 
her ten times on each cheek, and, in re- 
ply to a reproach she had often addressed 
him, said : 

“ You see, my dear, that it would have 
been useless for me to remain in Paris 
any longer, and killing myself to provide 
for the children, instead of coming here 
to recuperate my health, since heaven has 
sent us this fortune.” 

“ Heaven has sent a fortune to Jean,” 
she said, gravely. “ But Pierre ? ” 

“Pierre! why, he is a doctor; he can 
earn — money — and besides his brother 
will certainly do something for him.” 

“No. He would not accept it. Be- 
sides, this inheritance belongs to Jean, to 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


87 


Jean only. Pierre will therefore be at a 
disadvantage.” 

The old man seemed perplexed for a 
moment, but suddenly brightened up. 

“ Then,” said he, “ we can leave him 
the bulk of our fortune.” 

“No, that would not be just, either,” 
she said, thoughtfully. 

“ Well then, Zut ! what more can I do ? 
You are always hunting up disagreeable 
ideas and spoiling my pleasures,” he 
growled, fiercely; then added, more gently, 
“Well, good night; I am going to bed. 
All the same, it is a rare streak of good 
fortune.” 

And he went off enchanted, in spite of 
all, and without one word of regret for 
his generous friend. 

Madame Roland continued to dream 
in front of the smoking lamp. 


CHAPTER II. 


Pierre directed his steps toward the 
Rue de Paris, the principal street of 
Havre, now full of light, animation and 
noise. The cool sea breeze caressed his 
cheeks and brow as he walked slowly on, 
his cane under his arm, and his hands 
behind his back. 

He felt ill-at-ease, discontented, stupe- 
fied, as if he had received unwelcome 
news. No precise thought afflicted him, 
and he could not have told whence came 
this sadness of heart and numbness of 
body. Something was wrong, he knew 
not what; he could feel something painful 
within him, one of those almost insensible 
bruises that we cannot locate, but that 
fatigue and irritate. One of those slight 
and unknown sufferings, something like a 
grain of sorrow. 

When he reached the Theatre, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


89 


the lights of the Cafe Tortoni attracted 
him, and he walked slowly to the illumi- 
nated fafade. But as he was about to 
enter, the thought that he would meet 
friends there, and be obliged to make 
himself agreeable, restrained him, being 
suddenly overcome by a repugnance for 
the associations of the place. Retracing 
his steps, he returned to the principal 
street and walked toward the harbor. 

“ Where shall I go ? ” he asked him- 
self, searching in vain for a place that 
would please him and be congenial to his 
mind ; for he was irritated at being alone, 
and still did not want to meet anyone. 

When he reached the quay he again 
hesitated, then turned toward the pier — 
he had chosen solitude. 

He soon reached a bench on the break- 
water and sank down on it, already weary 
and disgusted with his stroll. 

“ What ails me to-night?” he repeated 
to himself. And he began to search in 
his mind for the cause of this irritation, 


90 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


as one questions a patient to find the cause 
of his fever. 

He was excitable and thoughtful at the 
same time ; he perplexed himself, then 
reasoned ; approving or blaming his im- 
pulses ; but the former nature remained 
stronger to the last, and his sensitiveness 
always dominated his intelligence. 

He, therefore, searched for the cause 
of his nervousness, this need of move- 
ment without aim, this desire of meeting 
some one to disagree with, and also this 
repugnance for the people he might see 
and for what they might say. 

“Can it be Jean’s inheritance?” he 
asked himself. 

Yes, it was possible, after all. When 
the notary announced the news, he had 
felt the violent beating of his heart. In- 
deed, one cannot always master his feel- 
ings, and we sometimes experience spon- 
taneous and persistent emotions, against 
which we struggle in vain. 

He began to reflect deeply on the psy- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


91 


chological problem, of the impression 
produced by a fact on the sensitive being, 
and creating within him a current of ideas 
and of painful or joyous emotions, con- 
trary to the desire or the good judgment 
of the thinking being, who has become 
superior to himself by the culture of his 
intelligence. 

He tried to conceive the state of mind 
of a son who inherits a large fortune, and 
who is about to enjoy so many long- 
desired pleasures, forbidden by the avarice 
of a loved and regretted father. 

He arose, and walked toward the end 
of the pier. He felt better; pleased to 
have understood and surprised himself, 
to have unveiled that “ other ” who is 
within us. 

“ So I have been jealous of Jean,” he 
thought, “ that is truly base ! I am sure 
of it now, for the first thought that came 
to me was his marriage with Mme. Rose- 
milly, although I do not like that matter- 
of-fact little goose, made to disgust one 


92 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


with good sense and wisdom. It is, 
therefore, gratuitous jealousy, the very 
essence of jealousy ; that which is, because 
it is! I must beware of it! ” 

He was now near the signal post, which 
indicates the height of the water in the 
harbor, and he lighted a match to read 
the list of ships reported in sight and that 
would come into port with the next tide. 
Steamers from Brazil, de la Plata, Chili 
and Japan had been sighted ; also two 
Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner and 
a Turkish ship. This last surprised 
Pierre as much as if he had read a “ Swiss 
steamer,” and he saw, in a sort of odd 
vision, a large vessel crowded with men, 
in turbans and wide pantaloons, ascend- 
ing the riggings. 

“ How stupid I am,” he thought, ” the 
Turks are really a maritime nation.” 

A few steps further on he stopped to 
contemplate the harbor. On the right, 
above Sainte Adresse, the two electric 
light-houses, resembling two monstrous 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


93 


twin Cyclops, cast their long and power- 
ful glances on the sea. The two parallel 
rays descended like giant tails of two 
comets, following a straight and immeas- 
urable declivity from the summit of the 
hill to the depth of the horizon. On the 
two piers, two other fires, children of 
these colossi, indicated the entrance of 
the Havre. And over there, on the other 
shore of the Seine, could be seen many 
others, fixed or twinkling, bright or 
eclipsed, opening and shutting like eyes; 
the eyes of harbors, yellow, red, green, 
watching the obscure sea covered with 
ships; the eyes of the hospitable land 
saying, only by the invariable and regular 
mechanical movement of their eye-lids : 
“ It is I” — “I amTrouville” — “ lam 
Honfleur” — “I am the river of Pont- 
Audernes” — and, dominating all the 
others, so high that from a distance it 
was mistaken for a planet, the aerial 
light-house d’Etourville showed the way 


94 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


to Rouen, through the sand banks at the 
mouth of the great river. 

On the deep limitless waters, more 
somber than the sky, could be seen here 
and there stars that trembled in the noc- 
turnal mist. They were small, close or 
distant, white, green or red, almost all 
motionless, though a few seemed to wan- 
der; these were the lights of the ships at 
anchor, awaiting the , incoming tide, or 
ships wandering about in search of moor- 
ings. 

Just at this moment the moon arose 
behind the city, appearing like an enor- 
mous and divine beacon, lighted in the 
firmament to guide the infinite fleet of 
true stars. 

“And we trouble ourselves about tri- 
fles,” murmured Pierre, half aloud. 

Suddenly a tall, fantastic shadow glided 
into the dark open space between the 
piers, Leaning over the granite parapet 
he saw the barque of a fisherman enter- 
ing the harbor, withoutthe sound of voice, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


95 


or the noise of oars or billows, propelled 
softly by its high brown sail, expanded 
to the breeze of the sea. 

“ If we could live forever on that, ” he 
thought, “we would perhaps be con- 
tented! ” Then, taking a few more steps 
along the pier, he saw a man seated at 
the extremity of the jetty. 

Who was he ? A dreamer, a lover, or 
a sage, a happy or an unfortunate being? 
He came nearer, curious to see the face 
of this solitary figure, and he recognized 
his brother. 

“ Halloo 1 Is it you, Jean ? ” he ex- 
claimed. 

“ Why — Pierre — what are you doing 
here ? ” asked his brother, in surprise. 

“ Oh 1 I have come to breathe the fresh 
air. And you ?” 

“ I am here for the same purpose,” 
laughed Jean. 

“ Hem 1 it is passingly beautiful here I” 
said Pierre, seating himself beside his 
brother. 


96 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Yes, indeed,” said Jean, carelessly. 

At the sound of his voice Pierre under- 
stood that Jean had not seen anything, 
and he continued: 

“ Whenever I come here I have wild 
longings to go away, to the north or to 
the south, anywhere with those ships. 
Think that those little lights over there 
come from all points of the compass, 
from lands of flowers and of beautiful 
pale or dark women ; from lands of bril- 
liant birds, elephants, warring lions and 
negro kings ; from all those countries that 
are but fairy tales to us who no longer 
believe in Sinbad the Sailor, nor in the 
Sleeping Beauty. It would be simply 
delightful to treat one’s self to a trip over 
there ; but then it would take money, a 
great deal — 

He stopped abruptly, remembering 
that his brother now had that money, and 
that free from all anxiety and daily labor, 
without incumbrance, happy, joyful, 
he could go wherever he chose, toward 










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PIERRE ET JEAM 


97 


the blonde Swiss or the dark southern 
beauty. 

Then one of those involuntary thoughts, 
frequent in him, and so abrupt and 
rapid that he could neither foresee, 
arrest, nor modify, seeming to come from 
a second independent and violent soul, 
passed through his mind: “Bah! he is 
too stupid. He will marry that little 
Rosemilly. ” 

“ I leave you to dream of the future 
and I will continue my walk, ” he said, as 
he arose. Then, taking his brother’s 
hand, he added, cordially: “Well, my 
dear Jean, you are now rich! I am glad 
to have met you alone this evening, to 
tell you how much it pleases me, to assure 
you of my sincere affection, and to offer 
my congratulations.” 

Jean, who was of a tender nature, was 
much moved, and stammered: “ Thank 
you — thank you — my good Pierre — you 
are very kind.” 

And Pierre walked away slowly, his 

Pierre et Jean 7 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


cane under his arm and his hands behind 
his back. 

When he reached the city he a^ain 
asked himself what he should do; he felt 
vexed and irritated to have been inter- 
rupted in his meditations and deprived 
of the sea by the presence of his brother. 
“I shall go and have a glass of some- 
thing with old Marowsko,” he thought, 
and he turned in the direction of the 
quarter of Ingouville. 

Old Marowsko was a Polish exile, 
whom he had met in a Paris hospital. It 
was said that he had a terrible history 
over there in his own country, and had 
been obliged to seek shelter in France, 
where, after passing a new examination, 
he had established himself as an apothe- 
cary. Nothing was known of his past 
life, but many dark rumors were whispered 
among the students and, later, among his 
neighbors. That reputation of redoubt- 
able conspirator, nihilist and regicide; of 
fearless patriot who had escaped death 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


99 


only through a miracle, had attracted the 
lively and adventurous imagination of 
Pierre Roland; and he had become the 
friend of the old exile without having ob- 
tained, however, any information of his 
life. It was owing to this friendship that 
the old man had established himself at 
Havre, counting on the young doctor’s 
practice to make his business successful. 

In the meantime he was living very 
poorly in his modest little shop, by selling 
medicine to the working men and small 
trades people in his neighborhood. 

Pierre often visited him for an hour’s 
chat after dinner, for he loved the quiet 
manners and rare Cv^nversations of the old 
exile, whose silence on his former life he 
respected. 

A single gas-jet burned above the 
counter, loaded with bottles. He never 
lighted more, through economy. Behind 
this counter, with his chin sunk on his 
breast, was the old man, sleeping pro- 
foundly in his chair; his long, hooked 


lOO 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


nose sloping from his projecting brow, 
and his bald head, giving him the sad 
and thoughtful look of a parrot. 

At the sound of the bell he awoke, 
and, recognizing the young doctor, came 
to meet him with extended hand. 

His black frock-coat, stained and soiled 
by acids and sirups, and much too large 
for his thin, small body, had the appear- 
ance of an antique cossack, and his 
strong Polish accent gave his thin voice 
a childish sound, like the lisping of a 
baby who is commencing to talk. 

“Anything new, my dear Doctor?” 
asked Marowsko, as he offered him a chair. 

“Nothing; the same old story,” an- 
swered the young man. 

“You do not look very cheerful,” said 
the old man, anxiously. 

“I am not of a very gay disposition, 
sighed Pierre. 

“There, there! you must shake that 
off. Will you take a glass of liqueur ?" 
he asked, by way of consolation. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


lOI 


“ Yes, that will cheer me up,” assented 
Pierre. 

“Then I shall give you a taste of 
my new preparation. I have been two 
months trying to extract something from 
the gooseberry, which until now has been 
used for sirups only. Well, at last I have 
found — I have found — something good, 
very good,” repeated the old man, rub- 
bing his hands delightedly. 

He opened a cupboard, and choosing a 
bottle from among a great number, 
showed it to Pierre triumphantly, giving 
it at the same time a series of short, 
incomplete jerks, for he never made 
an entire, definite movement, or even 
stretched out his arms and legs to their 
full length. His ideas were similar to his 
actions ; he indicated, promised, outlined 
or suggested, but never announced them. 

His greatest preoccupation in life, 
however, seemed to be the preparation of 
sirups and liqueurs. “ With a good sirup 


102 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


or a good ' liqueur one may make a 
fortune,” he often said. 

He had invented hundreds of sweet 
preparations, without succeeding in intro- 
ducing a single one of them. Pierre 
declared that Marowsko reminded him of 
Marat. 

Two little glasses were brought from 
the back of the shop and placed on the 
counter; then, having filled them, the two 
men held them up to the gas-light to 
examine the coloring of the liquid. 

“ A pretty ruby ! ” declared Pierre. 
The old Pole shook his parrot-head in 
delight. 

The young doctor then carried his 
glass to his lips, tasted, reflected, tasted 
again, smacked his lips, and pronounced 
it, “Very good, very good, and very new 
in flavor; a discovery, indeed, my dear 
friend ! ” 

“ Ah ! truly, I am quite delighted,” 
cried the old man, flattered. 

He then consulted his young friend as 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


103 


to the christening of this new liqueur ; 
he had thought of several suitable names, 
as “ Gooseberry Essence,” “Fine Goose- 
berry,” “ Groselia,” or “ Groseline,” but 
Pierre approved of none of them. 

Then an idea suddenly struck Marow- 
sko: “ What you said a while ago was 
very good, very good,” he declared, 
“ Pretty Ruby,” that would be excellent. 

But Pierre, although he had found it, 
still contested the appropriateness of this 
name, and advised that he should call it 
simply: “ Groseillette,” a name which 
Marowsko declared admirable. 

Then after a few moments’ silence 
under the light of the single gas-jet, 
Pierre, almost in spite of himself, said to 
his companion : 

“A very strange thing has happened 
in our family this evening. A friend of 
my father’s, who has just died, left his 
fortune to my brother.” 

The old chemist seemed not to under- 
stand at first, but, after a few moments’ 


104 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


reflection, hoped that the doctor had in- 
herited half. When the matter had been 
fully explained, he was surprised and 
angry at the slight put upon his young 
friend; and he repeated several times, as 
if to give vent to his displeasure: 

“ It will have a bad effect, a bad 
effect ! ” 

“ Why will it have a bad effect ? ” asked 
Pierre, who felt his uneasiness returning, 
“ What bad effect could result from the 
fact that my brother has inherited the 
fortune of a friend of the family?” 

But the old man answered cautiously : 
“ In such cases the fortune should be 
divided equally between the two brothers. 
I assure you that this will have a bad 
effect.” 

And the doctor returned home and 
went to bed, much vexed and disturbed. 
For a while he heard Jean walking softly 
in the next room, then dropped asleep, 
after swallowing two glasses of water in 
succession. 


CHAPTER III. 


Next morning the young doctor awoke 
with the firm determination of making his 
fortune. 

He had many times before taken this 
resolution, without, however, attaining the 
reality. At the beginning of all his at- 
tempted new careers the hope of quickly- 
acquired riches had sustained his efforts 
and his confidence until he encountered 
the first obstacle; until the first repulse 
threw him into a new course and new 
hopes. 

Buried deep amid the warm coverings 
of his bed, he was now meditating. How 
many doctors had become millionaires in 
a short time? All that was required was 
a litttle skill and ability, for, during his 
course of studies, he had closely observed 
the most celebrated professors, and he 
judged them to be asses. Indeed, he was 

105 


io6 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


certainly as good, if not better. • If he 
could, by whatever means, secure the 
patronage of the rich and influential resi- 
dents of Havre, he could easily make a 
hundred thousand francs a year. And he 
went on calculating what the precise gain 
would be. 

In the morning he would go out to 
visit his patients. Taking the small 
average of ten per day, at twenty francs 
each, it would give him, at the lowest cal- 
culation, seventy-two thousand francs a 
year, or even seventy-five thousand francs, 
for he was quite certain that his basis of 
ten patients was lower than the assured 
reality. In the afternoon he would re- 
ceive in his office an average of ten 
others at ten francs each, making thirty- 
six thousand francs — total a hundred 
and twenty thousand francs, in round 
numbers. Of course there would be the 
old clients and friends, whom he would 
visit at ten francs, and prescribe for at 
his office at five francs only ; but this re- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


107 


duction would be more than offset by the 
fees received in consultation with other 
physicians and other small sources of 
revenue pertaining to the profession, 
which he had not calculated. 

Nothing was easier than to achieve 
this. It simply required skillful advertis- 
ing and flattering articles in the Figaro, 
indicating that the scientific world was 
interested in, and closely watched, the won- 
derful cures undertaken by this young and 
modest Havrian savant. And he would be 
richer than his brother ; richer and more 
eminent, besides having the satisfaction 
of feeling that he owed his fortune to his 
own unaided efforts ; and he would be 
generous to his old parents, who would 
be justly proud of his renown. He would 
not marry, not wishing to incumber him- 
self with an only and troublesome woman, 
but he would chose mistresses from among 
his prettiest patients. 

He felt so assured of success that he 
jumped out of bed, as if to seize it at once, 


io8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


and he dressed hurriedly, that he might 
immediately begin his search for suitable 
apartments. 

Then, as he walked through the streets, 
he was thinking of how slight, indeed, were 
the determining causes of our actions. 
Since three weeks he might and should 
have taken this resolution, which now 
came to him, no doubt, through the knowl- 
edge of his brother’s inheritance, and fired 
his ambition. 

He stopped before the doors on which 
were displayed notices of beautiful or 
rich apartments to let; those without such 
adjectives he passed on in disgust, as 
being unworthy of notice. The former 
he visited, assuming a haughty and 
supercilious air for the occasion, measur- 
ing the height of the ceiling, sketching a 
plan of the rooms on his memorandum 
book, the dispositions of the doors, etc., 
and announced, pompously, that he was a 
doctor, and received many callers. The 
stairway must be wide and well-kept. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


109 


and, besides, he could not ascend above 
the first story. 

After jotting down seven or eight ad- 
dresses, and at least two hundred notes, 
for future reference, he returned home a 
quarter of an hour late for breakfast. 

As he entered the hall he was greeted 
by the noise of plates, knives and forks. 
They were, then, breakfasting without 
him. What did it mean? They were not 
usually so prompt for breakfast. He felt 
hurt and vexed at this apparent neglect 
of him. 

“ Come, Pierre ! hurry up !” cried his 
father, as he entered the room. “You 
know very well that we are going to the 
notary’s office at two o’clock, and there 
is no time to waste.” 

The young doctor kissed his mother, 
and shaking hands with his father and 
brother, took his seat without a word; 
and helping himself to the cutlet reserved 
for him in the platter, he found it cold, 
dry, and most likely the worst of the lot. 


I lO 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


He could not h-elp thinking that they 
might at least have left it in the oven until 
his arrival, and not forget him — the elder 
son — entirely. 

The conversation, which had been in- 
terupted by his entrance, was now again 
taken up where they had left off. 

“ If it were I,” Mme. Roland was say- 
ing to Jean, “I would at once set up a 
rich establishment; something that would 
make people open their eyes; I would go 
into society; ride a great deal in public, 
and choose one or two interesting cases, 
to make myself a name. I should want 
to be a kind of amateur lawyer, whose 
opinion would be much sought after. 
Thank Heaven ! you are now above 
want, and if you do take up a profession, 
it is merely so you won’t lose the fruit of 
your studies, and because a man should 
always have something to do. 

“ Cristi!” exclaimed old Roland, laying 
down the pear he was eating. “ If I were 
you, what a fine yacht I’d buy; something 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


III 


on the model of the pilots, and go off for 
a trip to those foreign countries.” 

Pierre, in his turn, now gave his advice. 
It was not wealth alone that made the 
moral or intellectual worth of a man. 
For the mediocre it was only a source of 
degradation, while it was, on the contrary, 
a powerful lever in the hands of the 
strong. But then these latter were rare. 
If Jean were a superior man, he could 
prove it, now that he was above need, but 
he should have to work a hundred times 
more than if he were in other circum- 
stances. It would not be sufficient to 
plead for or against the widow or orphan, 
and to pocket so many dollars for each 
suit gained or lost; but he must become 
an eminent jurist — a legal light, and he 
added, in conclusion, “ If I had money, 
what a number of bodies I should dissect.” 

“Tra la la! ” sung the old man, shrug- 
ging his shoulders, “the wisest thing in 
life is to let it flow tranquilly. We are 
not beasts of burden, we are men. When 


1 12 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


we are born poor, we must work; ah! well 
then, so much the worse; but when we 
have a large income, sacristi/ we should 
be very stupid to bother our brains.” 

“ Our tendencies are not the same!” re- 
plied Pierre, haughtily, “ I respect nothing 
in this world but knowledge and intel- 
ligence; all else is contemptible.” 

Mme. Roland, who always tried to 
smooth the incessant disputes between 
father and son, now turned the conver- 
sation by speaking of a recent murder, 
committed at Bolbec- Nointdt. Their 
minds were soon fully occupied by the 
circumstances surrounding this crime, 
attracted by the interesting horror, the 
mysterious charm of crimes, which, though 
vulgar, shameful, and repugnant, always 
exercises a strange and general fascina- 
tion for human curiosity. 

Although interested, old Roland did 
not forget to consult his watch frequently. 

“ There,” said he at last, “ it is time to 
make a start.” 


PIERRR ET JEAN 


II3 


“ It is not yet one o’clock,” laughed 
Pierre. “ Really it was not worth while 
hurrying breakfast and leaving me a cold 
cutlet.” 

“Will you come with us?” asked his 
mother. 

“I, why should I?” he replied, drily, 
“ My presence is quite unnecessary.” 

Jean was still silent, as if the matter 
neither concerned nor interested him. 
While they had discussed the murder at 
Bolbec, he had as a lawyer advanced a 
few ideas and observations on crime and 
criminals in general, but now that the 
conversation again turned on the inheri- 
tance, he fell back into his former silence. 
The animated color of his cheeks and the 
bright light in his eyes alone proclaimed 
his happiness. 

When the others had gone, Pierre 
again hurried out to resume his search. 
After two or three hours of inquiries, and 
climbing up and down stairs, he at last 


Pierre et Jean 8 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


ii4 

discovered something quite suitable on 
the Boulevard Fran9ois I. 

These apartments were on the first 
floor, and had two entrances on different 
streets. They consisted of two parlors, 
a small conservatory, in which the patients 
could walk up and down, amusing them- 
selves among the flowers while awaiting 
their turn, and a cosy dining-room over- 
looking the sea. 

The price — three thousand francs — 
proved a stumbling-block, however, as 
the first quarter was payable in advance, 
and he had not a single sou of his own. 

The litttle fortune amassed by his 
father brought in an income of barely 
eight thousand francs, and Pierre had 
often reproached himself for the embar- 
rassments he had caused his parents in 
money matters, by his many attempts 
and long hesitations in the choice of a 
profession. It was therefore out of the 
question to count on his father for such 
an amount; nevertheless, he promised to 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


^5 

give an answer within two days; thinking 
that he would ask his brother — as soon 
as he came into his inheritance — for the 
loan of the first quarter, or even of the 
half-year; it would be only a matter of 
fifteen hundred francs after all. 

“ It is a very simple affair,” he said to 
himself, “for I can repay it before the 
end of the year, or perhaps even in a few 
months. And besides, Jean will be only 
too happy to do me this favor.” 

As it was not yet four o’clock and he 
had nothing more to do, he wandered 
into the public garden, where he walked 
about aimlessly for a while, and then 
seated himself on a rustic bench. He 
remained there a long time, his eyes 
fixed on the ground; too weary even for 
thought, and overcome by a lassitude 
that was becoming a distress. 

How had he managed to pass his time 
since his return to the paternal house? 
Surely he had never so cruelly suffered 
from inaction and the emptiness of his 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


1 16 


existence. He had idled in the same 
manner every day, watching the tide on 
the pier, wandering through the streets, 
lounging in the cafes or at old Marow- 
sko’s, idling everywhere. And behold! 
this life he had hitherto enjoyed, sud- 
denly became odious and intolerable to 
him. 

“ If I had the money,” he thought, “ I 
would take a long drive into the country, 
along those shaded roads, skirted by 
beeches and elms.” But these fancies 
could not be indulged when he scarcely 
had the price of a glass of wine, or of a 
postage stamp in his pocket. He sud- 
denly realized how humiliating it was for 
a man past thirty, to ask his mother for 
a franc or a louis every time it was 
needed. “ Cristi! if I only had money,” 
he exclaimed aloud, digging his cane into 
the ground. 

Then the thought of his brother’s in- 
heritance came to him like the sting of a 
wasp, but he drove it away impatiently, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


II7 

unwilling to abandon himself to this un- 
reasonable jealousy. 

A number of pretty blonde-haired chil- 
dren were playing in the dusty road near 
him, piling up the sand into mountains, 
and then scattering it again with their 
feet, only to rebuild them. 

“ Our occupations resemble the work 
of these little urchins,” thought Pierre, 
who was in one of those gloomy moods 
when we search all the dark corners of 
our souls, and shake out its folds, as it 
were. 

Then he asked himself if it were not, 
after all, the wisest thing in life to beget 
two or three of these useless little beings, 
and watch them grow up, with curiosity 
and complacency. He almost felt a de- 
sire to marry. He would not be so lost 
if he were not alone in his hours of 
trouble and uncertainty. He could at 
least have some one near him, and it is 
something to have a woman’s sympathy 
when we are in pain. 


ii8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


He knew but little of women beyond 
what he had learned during his liaisons 
in the Latin Quarter, which had never 
lasted more than a fortnight, or as long 
as his monthly allowance permitted — to 
be renewed or replaced in the following 
month. How he should like to know a 
woman, a true woman; there must surely 
exist some good, gentle and sympathiz- 
ing women. Was not his mother the 
wisdom and charm of their home? 

The thought of paying a visit to Mme. 
Rosemilly made him start up suddenly, 
but he immediately sank back into his 
seat. No, he would not go ; she dis- 
pleased him. She had too much of that 
low and vulgar good sense ; and besides, 
she seemed to prefer Jean. Although he 
did not admit it ; this preference influ- 
enced his estimation of the widow’s intel- 
ligence, for, while loying his brother, he 
could not help thinking him somewhat 
mediocre, and judged himself to be his 
superior. 


'PIERRE ET JEAN 


II9 


However, he could not remain where 
he was all night, and he again began to 
ask himself, as on the preceeding even- 
ing, what he should do.- 

He felt a need of sympathy and con- 
solation. Why he should need consola- 
tion, he could not say ; but he experi- 
enced that weariness and sadness of 
spirit, when the presence and the caress 
of a woman, the touch of a hand, the 
rustle of a dress, the tender look of a 
pair of black or blue eyes seem indis- 
pensable to our hearts. 

He now suddenly bethought himself 
of a little bar-maid whom he had fre- 
quently seen, and even escorted home 
one evening, and he made his way to the 
cafe where she was employed. 

“ What would he say to her? and what 
would she say? Nothing, no doubt; but 
no matter, he would hold her hand in his 
for a few seconds, for she seemed to like 
him well enough. And, indeed, it was 
very stupid of him not to see her oftener. 


120 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


He found her dozing on a chair in the 
almost deserted cafe. Three men were 
smoking their pipes, with their elbows on 
the table, and the cashier was reading a 
novel, while the proprietor, in his shirt- 
sleeves, was sleeping soundly on a lounge. 

As soon as he entered, the young girl 
saw him and, starting up from her chair, 
hurried toward him. “ Good-day, how 
are you? ” she cried vivaciously. 

“ Quite well,” he answered, carelessly, 
“ and how are you? ” 

“ I am well enough,” she replied. “But 
how seldom we see you.” 

“I have very little time to spare,” he 
replied, then added, boastfully: “You 
know that I am a doctor.” 

“ No, you never told me that. If I had 
known it I should have consulted you last 
week, for I was quite sick,” she said, re- 
proachfully. “ But what will you have? ” 
she continued. 

“ Give me a bock, and what will you 
have? ” he asked, gallantly. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


I2I 


“Oh! I’ll take a bock, too, since you 
pay for it,” she laughed. 

She brought the glasses; then, seating 
herself beside him at one of the tables, she 
continued to chat familiarly, as if that offer 
had been a tacit understanding of friend- 
ship between them. 

“ Why do you not come oftener, my 
dear friend ? ” she said, looking at him 
tenderly, and taking his hand with the 
easy familiarity of the woman who sells 
her caresses. “ I am quite in love with 
you. ” 

But he was already disgusted with her; 
finding her stupid, common and vulgar. 
“Women should appear to us as in a 
dream, or in an aureole of luxury that 
veils their vulgarity, ” he was saying to 
himself. 

“ I saw you passing the other day with 
a tall young man with light whiskers. Is 
he your brother ? ” she went on. 

“ Yes, he is my brother,” he assented. 

“ He is very handsome, ” she continued. 


122 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Do you think so ? ” he asked. 

“Why, yes; and he looks very jolly,” 
she added. 

What strange impulse lead him to tell 
this bar-maid of Jean’s inheritance? 
That thought which he tried to banish 
when alone, which he drove from him 
through the fear of awakening jealousy 
in his soul, now came to his lips, and he 
told it, as if in need of pouring out the 
bitterness of his heart to some one. 

“ My brother is a very fortunate young 
fellow; he has just inherited an income 
of twenty thousand francs,” he said, as 
he carelessly crossed his legs. 

“Oh! and who left it to him — his 
grandmother or his aunt? ” she asked, her 
blue eyes opening wide in surprise. 

“No, an old friend of the family,” he 
replied. 

“ Only a friend? Impossible! And he 
left nothing to you? ” she asked, eagerly. 

“No,” he replied, “he scarcely knew 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


123 


After a few moments’ reflection she 
added, with a curious smile on her lips: 

“Ah, well! your brother is a lucky fel- 
low to have friends of that sort! Really, 
it is not surprising that he should re- 
semble you so little.” 

“ What do you mean by that? ” he 
asked, angrily, feeling a desire of throt- 
tling her, without knowing just why. 

“ Oh! nothing,” she said, resuming her 
stupid and innocent air; “I only meant 
that he is luckier than you.” 

He threw twenty sous on the table, and 
rushed out, with her words ringing in his 
ears: “It is not surprising that he re- 
sembles you so little.” 

What had she thought? What had she 
meant by those words? Certainly there 
was a sting of malice in them. It was a 
slander, an infamy! Yes, that girl really 
believed that Jean was the son of Mare- 
chal. 

The emotion that overcame him at the 
thought of this suspicion against his 


124 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


mother was so violent that he stopped 
and grasped the wall for support. He 
entered a cafe he was passing at the 
moment and ordered another bock. 

He felt his heart beat, and he shud- 
dered. Suddenly the recollection of old 
Marowsko’s words — “ It will have a bad 
effect” — came back to him. Had he 
had the same thought, the same sus- 
picion, as this hussy? 

“ Can it be that they believe such a 
thing? ” he asked himself, as he watched 
the white foam in his glass sparkle and 
die away. 

The reasons for this odious suspicion 
now appeared to him one after the other, 
clear, evident, and exasperating. That an 
old bachelor, without heirs, should leave 
his fortune to the two children of his 
friend, would be the simplest and most 
natural thing in the world; but, that he 
should give it entirely to one of those 
children, was certainly a cause of aston- 
ishment and a source of suspicion to the 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


125 


world. Why had he not foreseen this? 
Why had his father not felt it? And why 
had not his mother g-uessed it? No, the 
happiness of this unexpected fortune had 
so filled their minds as to leave no room 
for other thought. And, besides, how 
should these honest people suspect such 
infamy? 

But the public, their neighbors, the 
merchant, the grocer, all who knew them, 
in fact, would they not repeat this abom- 
inable thing, would they not joke and 
rejoice among themselves, laugh at his 
father and scorn his mother. 

Would not the same difference observed 
by the bar-maid, that Jean was fair and 
he dark, that there was no resemblance 
of face, figure nor intelligence between 
them, strike all eyes and minds. When 
speaking of Roland’s sons would they 
not say : “ Which is the true or the false 

one.” 

He started up with the resolution of 
warning his brother at once, of putting 


126 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


him on his guard against the awful danger 
that threatened their mother’s honor. 
But what should Jean do ? The simplest 
thing, assuredly, would be to refuse the 
inheritance, which would then go to the 
poor, and to tell their friends and acquaint- 
ances that the will contained unacceptable 
clauses and conditions, that would have 
made of Jean a trustee and not an heir. 

On his way home, he reflected that he 
must see his brother alone, as he could 
not speak on this subject before his par- 
ents. 

As he reached the door he heard the 
sound of laughter in the parlor, and as he 
entered he recognized the voices of Mme. 
Rosemilly and Captain Beausire, who had 
been invited to dinner by his father to 
celebrate the event. 

They had ordered vermouth and ab- 
sinthe as appetizers, and were already 
quite jolly. Captain Beausire was a little 
man who had become round by dint of 
rolling on the sea, and whose ideas also 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


127 


seemed rounded like pebbles on the sea- 
shore, He also possessed a rolling laugh, 
and appreciated life as being an excellent 
thing, of which we should take ample 
advantage. 

He was now clinking his glass against 
old Roland’s, while Jean was presenting 
two newly filled glasses to the ladies. 

Mme. Rosemilly would have refused, 
but Captain Beausire, who had known 
her husband, cried : 

“ Come, come, madame, bis repetita pla- 
cent, as we sailors say, and which signi- 
fies : “ Two vermouths never do any 

harm.” Why, since I have given up the 
sea, I take two or three glasses of artifi- 
cial rolling each day before dinner. And 
then I add another glass after my coffee 
for ballast ; that leaves me at high sea 
for the evening. I never take enough 
for a tempest, though, no, never ; for I 
fear a shipwreck.” 

Roland was delighted by these nautical 
phrases, and laughed heartily. His face 


128 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


was already flushed, and his eyes dimmed 
by the absinthe, and his fat body shook 
with merriment. He possessed the figure 
of a shop-keeper — nothing but an enor- 
mous round abdomen, wherein the rest of 
his body seemed engulfed. It was the 
flabby figure of a man who spends his 
life sitting down, having no thighs, no 
chest, no arms, no neck, the seat of his 
chair having crowded all their substance 
in the same place. 

Beausire, on the contrary, though short 
and stout, seemed as full as an egg and 
as hard as a ball. 

Mme. Roland had not yet emptied her 
first glass, but was contemplating her son 
Jean with eyes bright with happiness, 

Jean himself was bursting with joy. 
The affair was now signed and settled. 
His income of twenty thousand francs 
was now a reality. The self-possession 
that money lends was apparent in his 
whole being — in his voice, which was 
more sonorous than before; in his gay 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


129 


laugh, and in the assurance of his man- 
ners. 

Dinner w^s now announced, and old 
Roland was hurrying forward to offer his 
arm to Mme. Rosemilly, but his wife 
interfered, “ No, no, father,” she cried, 
“everything is for Jean to-day.” 

The table was resplendent with unac- 
customed luxury. In front of Jean’s 
plate — he was seated in his father’s 
place — an enormous bouquet loaded 
with silk favors, a real bouquet de grande 
ceremonie, arose like a decked cupola, 
flanked by four large crystal vases, one 
containing a pyramid of delicious peaches, 
the second a monumental cake covered 
with whipped cream and surmounted by 
a cathedral with bells of melted sugar; in 
the third were sliced pine-apples drowned 
in a clear sirup, and in the fourth — un- 
heard of luxury — were black grapes, 
imported from tropical countries. 

“Thunder!” exclaimed Pierre, as he 


Pierre et Jean 9 


130 


PIERRE ET JEAN' 


took his seat; “ we are evidently cele- 
brating the coming of Jean the Rich.” 

After the soup, the Madeira was 
brought on, and then everybody began 
to talk at once. Beausire was telling 
about a dinner at San Domingo, given 
by a negro general, and old Roland, while 
listening, tried to slip between the 
phrases the account of a dinner given by 
one of his friends at Mendon, where all 
the guests were sick for two weeks after. 
Mme. Rosemilly, Jean and his mother, 
were planning an excursion and a break- 
fast at Saint Jouin, where they antici- 
pated an ocean of pleasure; and Pierre 
was regretting that he had not dined 
alone in some eating-house by the sea- 
shore, where he would have escaped all 
this irritating noise and laughter. 

He was wondering how he should ever 
communicate his fears to his brother and 
prevail on him to renounce this already 
accepted fortune which intoxicated him 
in advance. It would indeed be hard for 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


I3I 

him, but it must be; he could not hesitate 
when their mother’s reputation was at 
stake. 

The apparition of an enormous trout 
started Roland on his favorite topic, and 
he told of his many fishing expeditions. 
Beausire then narrated some wonderful 
exploits that occured at Gabon, Mada- 
gascar, China and Japan; the stories 
from the last two countries where the 
fish had faces like the inhabitants, were 
particularly exciting. He told of the 
queer appearance of these fishes, with 
their big golden eyes, their red or blue 
bellies, their odd fan-shaped fins and their 
crescent-shaped tails; mimicking their 
antics in such a droll manner, that every- 
body laughed till the tears rolled down 
their cheeks. 

“ The Normans are justly called the 
Gascons of the North,” muttered Pierre, 
who alone seemed incredulous. 

The fish was followed by a vol-au-vent, 
a roasted fowl, a salad, green peas and a 


132 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


pite d’aloueties de Pithiviers. Mme. 
Rosemilly’s servant had been pressed 
into the service; and the gaiety increased 
with the number of glasses of wine. As 
the cork popped out of the first bottle of 
champagne, old Roland, much excited, 
imitated the noise with his lips, declaring: 
“ I like that better than a shot from a 
pistol.” 

“It may, however, be more dangerous 
for you,” sneered Pierre, more and more 
vexed. 

“ How so ?” asked the old man, forget- 
ting that he had been complaining of his 
health, of dizziness and constant and in- 
explicable uneasiness, for some time 
past. 

“ Because the ball from a pistol may 
glance off and miss you, while the glass 
of wine will inevitably go to your 
stomach.” 

“And then?” inquired the old man 
anxiously, as he deposited his untasted 
glass on the table. 


PIERRE ET JEART 


133 


“And then,” continued his son, “it 
will burn your stomach, disorganize your 
nervous system, impede the circulation 
and prepare the way for apoplexy, which 
threatens all men of your temperament.” 

The increasing intoxication of the old 
jeweler seemed suddenly dispelled, like 
smoke by the wind, and he looked at his 
son with a fixed and uneasy glance, trying 
to understand if he were really in earnest. 

“Ah ! those plagued doctors,” cried 
Beausire, “they are all the same; don’t 
eat, don’t drink, don’t fall in love, don’t 
play; for all that hurts your delicate 
health. Well ; Monsieur, I have prac- 
ticed all those forbidden things in all 
parts of the world, where ever and when 
ever I could, and I am none the worse 
for it.” 

“ In the first place, captain,” said Pierre, 
angrily, “you are stronger than my father, 
and then all the viveurs speak as you do 
until the day when — and then they can- 
not return to tell the prudent doctor that 


134 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


he was right. When I see my father 
doing what is most dangerous for him, 
it is only natural that I should warn him. 
I should, indeed, be a bad son if I were 
to act otherwise.” 

“ There, there, Pierre ! ” interposed his 
mother, plaintively, “ what’s the matter 
now ? ” It won’t hurt him for this once, 
and it is real mean of you to spoil his 
pleasure and grieve us all on such an oc- 
casion.” 

“ He may do as he pleases, I have 
warned him,” said Pierre, shrugging his 
shoulders. 

But old Roland did not drink. He 
looked lovingly at his glass filled with 
clear and luminous wine; watching its 
light and intoxicating soul escaping in 
small globules that ascended from the 
bottom and rapidly evaporated on the 
surface, with the distrust of a fox that 
finds a dead hen and suspects a trap. 

“ Do you think it would hurt me much ” 
he asked, hesitatingly. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


135 


“ No, never mind, you may drink it for 
this once,” said Pierre, who began to re- 
proach himself for his ill-humor, “ but you 
must not abuse it, and fall into a habit 
of drinking it.” 

Old Roland raised his glass, without, 
however, carrying it to his lips. He con- 
templated it, sadly, with a curious mixture 
of longing and fear; then he smelled, 
tasted, and finally sipped it in little swal- 
lows, that he might the better relish the 
flavor, with his heart full of anguish, of 
weakness and of gluttony, which changed 
to regret as soon as he had absorbed the 
last drop. 

As Pierre turned away from his father, 
he encountered the limpid blue eyes of 
Mme. Rosemilly. They were fixed on 
him with a penetrating and reproving 
look. He guessed and felt the thought 
that animated this glance, coming from a 
simple and upright soul, that plainly^ 
said: “You are jealous, and it is shame- 
ful.” 


136 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


He lowered his eyes and began to eat, 
but he had no appetite, and found every- 
thing bad. He was harassed by a desire 
of going away, a wish to fly from the 
midst of these people, to escape their 
conversations, their laughter and their 
joy. 

Meanwhile, old Roland, whose judg- 
ment was again becoming obscured by 
the fumes of the wine, was already forget- 
ting his son’s warnings, and looked ten- 
derly at an open bottle of champagne out 
of the corner of his eye. He dared not 
touch it, through fear of fresh admoni- 
tions, but was searching for some plan or 
artifice by which he could obtain pos- 
session of it without awakening Pierre’s 
remarks. A simple ruse occurred to 
him. He took up the bottle, carelessly, 
and, holding it by the bottom, extended 
his arm across the table, and filled the 
doctor’s empty glass. He then made the 
round of the others, in turn; but when he 
came to his own glass he began to talk 


PIERRE ET JEAET 


m 


very loudly and excitedly, and, if he 
poured any into it, it was certainly 
through accident; besides, nobody was 
looking at him, 

Pierre was drinking a good deal, to 
drown his nervousness and irritation; re- 
peatedly filling his glass and carrying the 
sparkling and transparent liquid to his 
lips, allowing it to flow slowly into his 
mouth, and enjoying that little sugared 
sting of evaporating gas on his tongue. 

Little by little, a delicious warmth 
filled his body. Beginning in the stom- 
ach, it soon invaded his entire being, like 
a warm and beneficent wave. He felt 
better, less impatient and discontented; 
and his resolution of speaking to his 
brother that very night weakened, not 
that he renounced the thought, blit he 
was loth to disturb that comfortable feel- 
ing he felt within him. 

Beausire arose to propose a toast and, 
bowing to the assembled company, he 
said: 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


138 

“ Most gracious ladies, Messeigneurs, 
we are here to celebrate a happy event 
in the life of one of our friends. It has 
been said that ‘ Fortune ’ is blind, but I 
believe that she has been simply short- 
sighted, or malicious, and, having just ac- 
quired a powerful marine glass, she has 
discovered in the port of Havre, the son 
of our brave comrade, Roland, captain of 
the Perle." 

This speech was greeted with bravos 
and clapping of hands, and Roland senior 
arose to respond. 

After coughing several times, to clear 
his throat, for he was parched and his 
tongue was thick, hestammered: “Thanks, 
Captain — many thanks for myself and my 
son — I can never forget your conduct on 
this occasion — I drink to your wishes.” 
At this point, however, he was overcome 
by emotion; the tears came into his eyes 
and ran slowly down his nose, and, find- 
ing no more to say, sank back heavily 
into his chair. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


139 


Jean, laughing heartily, arose in his 
turn. 

“ It is I,” said he, “.who should now 
thank the devoted friends, the excellent 
friends (here he looked at Mme. Rose- 
milly), who on this day give me this touch- 
ing proof of their affection. But it is not 
by words that I can show my gratitude. 
I shall prove it to-morrow, at each instant 
of my life and always; for our friendship 
is not of the kind that passes away in a 
day.” 

His mother was much moved by these 
words, and murmured approvingly: “Very 
good, my child.” 

“ Come, Madame Rosemilly,” called 
old Beausire, “ give us a toast in the 
name of the fair sex.” 

She raised her glass, and, in a voice 
tinged with sadness, said, gently : “I 
drink to the memory of Monsieur Mare- 
chal ! ” 

A few seconds of calm and respectful 
silence followed these words, as if they 


140 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


had been a prayer, then Beausire, who 
was always ready with a compliment, 
remarked : 

“ It takes a woman to pay so delicate 
a tribute,” then, turning to old Roland, 
he asked: “Who was Marechal, any 
way? He must have been very intimate 
with him.” 

Old Roland, more affected by the wine 
than by the memory of his departed 
friend, began to weep, and stammered 
incoherently: 

“ A brother — you know — one of those 
we never find again — we were always 
together — he dined with us every even- 
ing — and often took us to the theater 
— lean only say that — that — that — a 
friend, a true — a true — wasn’t he, 
Louise ? ” 

“Yes, he was a faithful friend,” she said, 
simply. 

Pierre looked from his father to his 
mother, but the subject was immediately 
changed, and he returned to his glass. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


I4I 

He could never clearly remember how 
the evening ended. They had taken 
coffee, absorbed much wine, laughed and 
joked a great deal; then he had gone to 
bed about midnight, his mind much con- 
fused and his head very heavy, and he 
had slept like a log until nine o’clock 
next day. 


CHAPTER IV. 

This deep slumber, bathed by cham- 
pagne and chartreuse, undoubtedly soft- 
ened and calmed his heart, for he awoke 
the next morning with more benevolent 
dispositions. While dressing, he summed 
up and weighed his emotions of the pre- 
vious day, trying to decipher clearly and 
completely the real and secret motives, 
the interior as well as the exterior causes 
of his doubts. 

It was possible, after all, that on learn- 
ing that one alone had inherited from a 
stranger, this bar-maid, with the instinct 
of a wanton, had had a wrong suspicion ; 
for did not those creatures always have 
such suspicions against all respectable 
women, without even a shadow of foun- 
dation for it ? Whenever they spoke of 
irreproachable characters, was it not to 
injure and calumniate them ? Every time 

M3 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


143 

a respectable person was mentioned they 
became angry, as if they had been in- 
sulted, crying: “Ah! I know all about 
your respectable married women! They 
have more lovers than we, only they hide 
them, being such hypocrites. Ah! yes; 
they are very respectable! ” 

Under any other circumstances he 
would not have understood, he never 
would have supposed it possible, that in- 
sinuations of that nature could be uttered 
against his poor mother, who was so 
good, so simple and worthy. But his 
soul was troubled by this leaven of jeal- 
ousy that was fermenting within him. 
His over-excited mind, filled to over- 
flowing with bitter thoughts against his 
brother, had, perhaps, in spite of himself, 
imparted to this wanton, odious suspi- 
cions that she would not have had other- 
wise. 

It was possible that his • imagination 
alone — that ungovernable imagination 
which incessantly escaped his will to 


144 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


wander forth, free, bold and adventurous 
into the infinite universe of ideas; some- 
times bringing back shameful and inad- 
missible suspicions and hiding them in 
the unfathomable depths of his soul, like 
stolen things — had alone invented and 
created those terrible doubts. Then his 
heart assuredly had secrets for him; and 
had not that wounded heart found, in this 
abominable suspicion, a means of depriv- 
ing his brother of that fortune he envied. 
He now began to suspect himself; inter- 
rogating his conscience, like a penitent 
sinner, on the mysteries of his thoughts. 

Mme. Rosemilly, notwithstanding her 
limited intelligence, possessed the delicate 
tact and subtile sense of women. There- 
fore, that idea had not occurred to her, 
since she had drank to the memory of 
Marechal with perfect simplicity. She 
would not have done thus, had she had 
the least suspicion. He no longer doubted 
that his involuntary jealousy of his brother 
and his religious love of his mother had 


PIERRE ET JEAEt 


145 

exalted his scruples. They were natural 
and honest, no doubt, but exaggerated. 

Having reached this conclusion, he now 
felt as pleased as if he had accomplished 
a good action, and he resolved to show 
himself more friendly to everybody, com- 
mencing with his father, who irritated him 
incessantly by his manners, stupid obser- 
vations, vulgar opinions and ordinary 
intellect. 

He was punctual to breakfast, and 
amused the family by his wit and good 
humor. 

“ My dear Pierrot,” exclaimed his de- 
lighted mother, “ you can’t imagine how 
amusing you are, when you try.” 

He kept up his witty conversation, 
making them laugh at the ingenious por- 
traits he drew of their friends. Beausire 
served as a foil, and, sometimes, Mme. 
Rosemilly, even, but with the latter he 
was discreet and not too malicious, while 
he looked at his brother, thinking: *' Why 
don’t you defend her, you blockhead; you 

Pierre et Jean 10 


146 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


may be rich, but I can eclipse you when- 
ever I please. 

“ Will you need the Perle to-day ?” he 
asked his father as they drank their 
coffee. 

“ No, my son, not to-day,” answered 
the old man. 

“ Can I take her and Jean Bart T' he 
continued. 

‘‘ Why, certainly, if you wish,” assented 
his father. 

He bought a good cigar from the first 
tobacconist, and went down in high spirits 
to the pier; admiring the clear bright sky, 
so blue and fresh, as if washed by the 
breeze from the sea. 

The sailor Papagris, surnamed Jean 
Bart, was sleeping in the bottom of the 
yacht; which he always prepared to put 
off at noon, when they did not go fishing 
in the morning. 

” We have it to ourselves, mate ! cried 
Pierre, gaily, as he descended the iron 
ladder of the quay and jumped into the 


PIERRE ET lEAJV 


H7 

boat. “What wind !” he added, eagerly, 
as he came near him. 

“ Still easterly. Mister Pierre,” replied 
the sailor. “ There’s a splendid breeze 
outside.” 

“Well then, old man, let’s push off at 
once.” 

They hoisted the foresail, raised the 
anchor, and the freed boat glided off 
slowly on the calm waters of the harbor. 
The faint breeze from the streets fell on 
the top of the sails so softly that it was 
imperceptible, and the Per/e seemed ani- 
mated by a life of its own — pushed on by 
a mysterious force within it. Pierre had 
taken the rudder; the cigar between his 
teeth, his legs stretched out on the seat, 
and with his eyes half closed under the 
blinding rays of the sun, he was watch- 
ing the big pieces of tarred wood from 
the breakwater, as they glided past him. 

As they founded the point of the north 
pier that had sheltered them, the fresh 
breeze touched the hands and face of the 


148 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


young doctor like a cold caress, and he 
filled his expanding lungs by drinking it 
in long, delicious draughts. The brown 
sail was suddenly inflated and rounded 
out, careening and wafting the boat along 
at all its speed. Jean Bart had now 
hoisted the jib, and its triangle, extended 
to the wind, resembled a wing that sped 
them along, skimming over the sea, with 
that soft noise of water that boils and 
rushes away, the bow plowing through 
the sea and raising waves of white foam 
that fell back dark and heavy as the 
plowed earth of the fields. 

At each encountered wave — they were 
short and frequent — the shuddered 

from the jib to the trembling rudder in 
Pierre’s hands ; and at each fresh gust 
of wind the waves arose to the gunwale, 
as if eager to engulf the bark. 

A coal steamer from Liverpool lay at 
anchor, waiting for the tide, and they 
made toward her, watching the busy sail- 
ors going to and fro on her deck. Then 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


149 


they passed on, and for three happy hours 
Pierre, tranquil, calm and contented, 
wandered on the agitated waters, govern- 
ing that thing of wood and canvas, as if 
it were a winged animal, rapid and docile, 
that came and went at his caprice under 
the pressure of his fingers. 

He was dreaming, as we sometimes 
dream on horseback, or on the deck of a 
ship ; thinking of his future that would 
be so beautiful, and of the pleasures of 
living intelligently. On the very next 
day he would ask his brother for the loan 
of those fifteen hundred francs for three 
months, that he might immediately take 
possession of that cozy suite of apartments 
on the Boulevard Francois I. 

“There’s the fog. Mister Pierre,” broke 
in the old sailor, suddenly, “we’d better 
go in.” 

Pierre awoke from his reverie, and, 
raising his eyes, saw a gray mist in the 
north ; a dense fog drowning the sky 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


150 

and covering the sea, rushing toward 
them like a cloud fallen from above. 

They put about and ran before the 
wind toward the pier, closely followed by 
the rnist that gained rapidly upon them. 
When it overtook the Perle, enveloping 
her in its imperceptible thickness, and 
filling the atmosphere with that odor of 
smoke and moldiness peculiar to sea fogs, 
a cold shiver ran through Pierre’s body 
and he quickly closed his lips, to shut out 
the taste of that damp and icy cloud. 

When the yacht reached its accustomed 
place at the quay, the city was already 
enshrouded in that thin vapor, which, 
though it did not fall, dampened every- 
thing like a rain. 

Pierre hurried home, uncomfortable 
and chilled, and threw himself on his bed, 
where he remained till summoned to 
dinner. As he entered the dining-room, 
his mother was saying to Jean: 

“ The conservatory will be charming. 
We shall fill it with flowers, and I will 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


I5I 

take charge of them, and renew the 
plants when necessary. When you give 
parties, we’ll light it up, and it will look 
like a real fairy land.” 

“What are you speaking of?” asked 
the young doctor. 

“ Of an elegant suite of apartments I 
have just rented for your brother,” replied 
his mother, smiling. “A regular jewel, 
my dear. A first floor, opening on two 
streets, with two parlors, a conservatory, 
and a rotonde dining-room. Just the 
thing for a rich bachelor.” 

Pierre paled, and a sudden anger filled 
his heart. “ Where is it situated? ” he 
asked. 

“ On the Boulevard Francois I,” she 
answered. 

He no longer doubted, and sank back 
in his chair, so exasperated that he wanted 
to cry out: “This is too much! Is he 
to have everything? ” 

His mother, radiant with happiness, 
went on. 


152 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“And just imagine! I got it for two 
thousand eight hundred francs. They 
wanted three thousand, but I obtained 
the reduction by taking a lease for three, 
six, or nine years. Your brother will be 
so comfortable there, and besides, an 
elegant house makes the fortune of a 
lawyer. It attracts the client, charms 
and impresses him, inspires him with re- 
spect for the owner, and makes him under- 
stand that the advice of a man with such 
an establishment must be well paid for.” 

After a few seconds of silence, she re- 
sumed: “We must find something like 
it for you; more modest, of course, since 
you are poor; but something small and 
cozy, for a nice place counts for a good 
deal.” 

“ Oh! as for me, I rely on hard work 
and science,” replied Pierre, disdainfully. 

“ That’s all very well,” insisted his 
mother, “ but I assure you that pretty 
apartments are a great help to a profes- 
sional man, all the same.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


153 


“ By-the-way, when did you meet this 
Marechal?” he suddenly asked, looking 
at his father. 

“ Let me see,” said old Roland, scratch- 
ing his head, reflectively, “ I don’t quite 
remember, it’s so long ago. Ah! yes, I 
recollect, now. Your mother made his 
acquaintance in the shop; didn’t you, 
Louise? He came to order something, 
and returned frequently, afterward. He 
first came as a customer and then as a 
friend.” 

“ And when was that? ” asked Pierre. 

Roland reflected again, but remembered 
nothing more, and appealed to his wife. 

“What year was it, Louise? You 
can’t have forgotten, you have such an 
excellent memory. Let me see, it was 
in — in — ’55 or ’56 — . But why don’t 
you talk, Louise, you must remember? ” 

She did think for a few moments, then 
answered, in a quiet and firm voice: 

“ It was in ’58. Pierre was then three 
years old. I know I cannot be mistaken. 


154 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


for it was the year he had the scarlet 
fever, and Marechal, whom we knew but 
slightly then, was of great assistance.” 

“ Yes, yes ! that’s it,” cried Roland, 
“ and he was a great help, indeed. As 
your mother was worn out with fatigue, 
and I was busy at the shop, he always 
went out for your medicine. He was a 
good friend, indeed. And you can’t 
imagine how delighed he was when you 
were well again, and how he did kiss you. 
From that time we were great friends.” 

This abrupt and violent thought sud- 
denly pierced Pierre’s heart like a lacerat- 
ing ball. .“Since he knew me first, and 
loved me so, why did he leave all his fort- 
une to my brother, and nothing to me ? 
and, besides, was I not the cause of his 
great intimacy with my parents ? ” 

He asked no more questions, but re- 
mained gloomy and absorbed in reflection 
during the rest of the meal ; filled with a 
new uneasiness, the secret germ of a new 
disease. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


155 


He went out early and wandered aim- 
lessly through the streets. The city was 
still enshrouded in the mist, rendering the 
night sultry and uncomfortable, as if a 
pestilential breath had fallen on the earth. 
It could be seen floating under the gas- 
lights, almost obscuring the light at times. 
The pavements were as slippery as on a 
frosty night, and the atmosphere seemed 
filled with all the bad odors emitted from 
cellars, gutters, sewers and filthy kitchens, 
mingled with the intolerable smell of that 
roving fog. 

Pierre walked on, with his eyes on the 
ground and his hands in his pockets, un- 
til he could no longer endure this oppress- 
ing atmosphere ; then, shivering with cold, 
he entered old Marowsko’s shop. 

He found the chemist sleeping, as usual, 
under the single gas-jet. On recognizing 
Pierre, whom he loved with the attach- 
ment of a faithful dog, he shook off his 
torpor and produced two glasses, with a 
bottle of groseilletie.” 


156 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“Well,” asked the Doctor, “how are 
you getting on with your liqueur?"''' 

The old chemist then explained how 
four of the principal cafes of the city had 
consented to introduce it, and how the 
editors of the Phare de la Cote and the 
Semaphore Ifavrais had offered to adver- 
tise it in exchange for certain pharma- 
ceutical preparations. 

Then, after a long silence, Marowsko 
asked if Jean had really come into pos- 
session of the inheritance; afterward 
adding two or three vague questions on 
the same subject. His jealous affection 
for Pierre revolted against this preference ; 
and from his averted glance, his hesitating 
voice and in the phrases that arose to his 
lips, but which he was too timid and 
prudent to utter, Pierre believed he saw 
the suspicion that filled his mind. 

He was quite sure that the old man 
was thinking, reproachfully : “You should 
not have allowed him to accept an inher- 
itance that will compromise your mother’s 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


157 


honor.” Perhaps he even believed that 
Jean was Marechal’s son. Indeed, he 
must believe it! Why not? the thing 
seemed so probable and evident; when 
he, Pierre, her son, had been struggling 
for three days with all his might, with all 
the subtilities of his heart, to deceive his 
reason. Was he not himself battling 
against this terrible suspicion? 

And again the need of being alone to 
think over, to discuss this with himself, to 
face boldly, without scruples, without 
weakness, this possible and monstrous 
thing, came over him so strongly that he 
arose, pressed the hand of the astounded 
chemist, and, without even stopping to 
drink his glass of groseillette,” plunged 
again into the dark foggy night, repeat- 
ing : “Why did Marechal leave all his 
fortune to Jean 1 ” 

It was no longer jealousy that drove 
him on, neither was it that base and natu- 
ral envy he knew to be hidden within him, 
and which he had struggled against these 


158 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


three days, but it was the terror of a 
frightful thing, the terror of believing that 
Jean, his brother, was the son of that 
man ! 

No, he did not believe it; he could not 
even entertain that criminal doubt ! 
Nevertheless, it was necessary that this 
suspicion, so light and so improbable, 
should be cast from him, completely and 
forever. He must dispel these doubts, 
he must regain his former confidence, for 
his mother was the only being that he 
loved in all the world. 

And now, alone, as he wandered through 
the night, he would make a thorough 
investigation into his doubts and recol- 
lections, from which would surely result 
the vindication of his mother. Then it 
would be over; he would never think of 
it again, no, nevermore. Then he could 
sleep in peace. 

“ Let me first examine the facts 
clearly,” he thought. “ I shall by that 
means bring to mind all that I know of 


PIERRE ET JEAlSr 


159 


him, of his manner toward my brother 
and myself. I will search for the causes 
that could have resulted in this preference: 
He saw Jean come into the world — 
yes, but he already knew me. Had he 
loved my mother with a secret and 
reserved love, he would have preferred 
me, since it was through me, through my 
illness that he became intimate with my 
parents. Therefore, he should have 
chosen me, and should have had a more 
tender affection for me; unless that, 
having seen my brother grow up from 
infancy, he had conceived an instinctive 
predilection for him.” 

Then he searched his memory with des- 
peration; concentrating all his mind, all 
his intellectual power in the reconstruc- 
tion and penetration of the man; that man 
who had passed before him, indifferent to 
his heart, during all the years in Paris. 

But he felt that walking, even the 
light movement of his footsteps, troubled 
his ideas, disturbed their concentration. 


i6o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


weakened their focus and clouded his 
memory. 

To cast on the past and on those un- 
known events, that sharp light from 
which nothing escapes, it was necessary 
that he should be motionless and in a 
vast empty space. He decided to go 
and seat himself on the pier, as he had 
done the other night. 

As he approached the harbor he could 
hear from the open sea, a plaintive and 
sinister moan, like the bellowing of a bull, 
but more prolonged and powerful. It 
was the cry of a siren, the voice of ships 
lost in the fog. 

A shudder ran through him, contract- 
ing his heart, as this cry of distress re- 
sounded through his soul and in his 
nerves, almost believing it had come 
from his own lips. Another voice similar 
to the first, moaned in its turn a little 
further off; then closer by, the siren of 
the harbor responded with an agonizing 
shriek. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


i6i 


Pierre hurried along into- this lugu- 
brious and moaning darkness until he 
reached the extremity of the pier. Then 
closing his eyes to shut out the glare of 
the electric lights — now veiled in mist — 
which render the port accessible at night, 
and the red fire of the light-house on the 
south pier, which, however, was scarcely 
distinguishable, he turned half round to 
lean his elbows on the granite and buried 
his face in his hands. 

Though his lips did not move, his 
thoughts incessantly repeated: “ Mare- 
chal,” “ Marechal,” as if to recall, to 
evoke and provoke his shadow. And 
within his closed eyelids, he suddenly 
saw him as he had known him. He was 
a man of sixty, with a pointed white 
beard and thick eye-brows that were 
white also. He was neither tall nor 
short, had soft, gray eyes, a modest de- 
meanor, an affable air and the aspect of 
a simple, affectionate being. He called 
Pierre and Jean “My dear children;^’ 

Pierre et Jean n 


i 62 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


never seeming- to prefer one to the other, 
and often received them to dinner. 

And Pierre, with the tenacity of a dog 
following an evaporated scent, began to 
search the words, gestures, intonations 
and looks of this man disappeared from 
the earth. He refound him, little by 
little, in his entirety, in his apartments 
on the Rue Tronchet as when his bro- 
ther and himself dined with him. 

Two old servants, who had long ago, 
no doubt, taken the habit of saying “ Mon- 
sieur Pierre” and “Monsieur Jean,” 
waited on them. 

On their arrival, Marechal would ex- 
tend both hands to the young men; the 
right to one, the left to the other, at 
hazard, saying: “ Good day, my children, 
have you any news from your parents ? 
They do not write to me any more.” 

They would then converse in a friendly 
way on the topics of the day. He was 
not more brilliant than the average of 
men, but he was kind, agreeable, and full 


PIERRE EP JEAN 


163 


of tact. He was assuredly a good friend 
to them, one of those friends of whom 
we think but little, because we feel so 
sure of their affection. 

Pierre’s mind was now full of recol- 
lections concerning him. Seeing him 
thoughtful on many occasions, and guess- 
ing that the student had already spent his 
allowance, Marechal had spontaneously 
offered and loaned him some money — a 
few hundred francs, perhaps, soon forgot- 
ten by both, and never returned. There- 
fore it was evident that this man had 
always loved him, and felt interested in 
him, since he troubled himself about his 
needs. Then — then why had he left all 
his fortune to Jean? No, he had never 
been visibly more affectionate toward his 
brother than toward himself, neither had 
he appeared more interested in one than 
in the other. Then — then — he must 
have had a powerful and secret reason to 
give everything to Jean — everything — • 
and nothing to Pierre. 


164 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


The more he reflected, and the more 
he revived the past, the more improbable 
and incredible seemed this difference es- 
tablished between them. 

And a sharp pain, an inexpressible 
anguish entered his breast, rending his 
heart into shreds. The springs seemed 
broken, and the blood rushed through 
it in torrents, shaking and tossing it tu- 
multuously. 

Then, in a choking voice, as if talking 
in a nightmare, he murmured: “I must 
know, my God, I must know ! ” 

He now went further back into the 
past, in the days long ago, when his par- 
ents resided in Paris. But the faces 
escaped him, and this confused his recol- 
lections. He strove eagerly to remem- 
ber Marechal with blonde, brown or black 
hair; but all in vain; the last figure of 
this man, the figure of his old age, had 
effaced the others. He, nevertheless, 
remembered that he was then more slen- 
der, that his hand was soft and that he 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


165 


often brought flowers, very often; for his 
father incessantly repeated: “What! 
more flowers ! why, it is folly, my friend; 
you will ruin yourself in roses.” And 
Marechal would reply: “Nevermind; it 
pleases me.” 

And, suddenly, the voice of his mother, 
of his mother smiling and saying, 
“Thanks, my friend,” came back to his 
mind so vividly that he believed he again 
heard it. She must have pronounced 
these three words very often to engrave 
them so vividly in his memory. 

Then Marechal, the rich gentleman, the 
customer, brought flowers to this little 
shop-woman, to the wife of a modest 
jeweler. Did he love her? Why should 
he have become the friend of these shop- 
keepers if he did not love the wife? He 
was an educated and refined man. How 
many times he had talked of poets and 
poetry with Pierre! He did not appre- 
ciate writers as an artist, but as an emo- 
tional man; and the young doctor had 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


i66 


often smiled at those emotions which he 
considered somewhat stupid. He now 
understood why this sentimental man 
never could have been his father’s friend, 
his father who was so common-place, so 
matter-of-fact, and to whom the word 
“ poetry” was equivalent to stupidities. 

Thus this Marechal, young-, rich, gener- 
ous and ready to fall in love, had by 
chance entered a shop one day and re- 
marked the pretty shop-woman. He had 
purchased, had returned, chatted, becom- 
ing more and more familiar from day to 
day, and had paid, by frequent purchases, 
the right of seating himself at their fire- 
side, of smiling to the young woman, and 
of pressing the hand of the husband. 

And then — and then — Oh ! my God 
— then ? 

He had loved and caressed the first 
child, the jeweler’s child, until the birth 
of the other ; then he had remained im- 
penetrable until death. And when the 
grave had closed over him, his flesh de- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


167 


composed, his name become effaced from 
the list of the living, and his entire being 
disappeared for ever, then, having noth- 
ing more to fear or to hide, he had given 
his whole fortune to the second child ! — 
But why ? — He was a man of intelli- 
gence — he should have understood and 
foreseen that he might, that he would 
almost infallibly lead everybody to sup- 
pose that this child was his — therefore, 
he would be dishonoring a woman. Why 
should he have done this if Jean were 
not his son ? 

And suddenly a precise and terrible 
recollection came to him. Marechal had 
been fair, as fair as Jean. He now re- 
membered a miniature portrait of him, 
often seen on the chimney-piece of their 
parlor in Paris. Where was it now? 
Lost or hidden ! Oh ! if he could only 
hold it in his hand for a second ! His 
mother had perhaps hidden it in a secret 
drawer with other relics of her love. 

His distress at this thought became so 


1 68 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


poignant that a moan escaped from his 
lips, one of those short, plaintive cries 
that sharp pains wring from the heart. 
And suddenly the siren of the pier howled 
near him. as if she had heard and under- 
stood him, and was moaning in response. 
Its savage and formidable clamor, more 
resounding than the thunder, made to 
dominate the voice of the wind and of the 
waves, floated into the night over the 
invisible sea in its shroud of mist, like 
the roaring of a supernatural monster. 

Then, through the fog, far and near, 
arose similar cries, and those appeals, ut- 
tered by blinded ships, seemed frightful 
in the night. 

Then all was again silent. 

Pierre had opened his eyes and was 
looking around him in astonishment, as 
if awakened from a nightmare and sur- 
prised to find himself there. 

“ Why, I am mad ; ” he thought, “ I 
suspect my mother.” And a flood of love 
and tenderness, of repentance, of prayer 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


169 


and of desolation, drowned his heart. His 
mother ! Knowing her as he did, how 
could he have suspected her? Was not 
the soul, was not the life of this simple, 
chaste and loyal woman more transparent 
than water ? Having seen and known 
her, how was it possible to suspect her ? 
And, it was he, her son, who had doubted 
her! Oh ! if he could have taken her in 
his arms at this moment, how he would 
have embraced and caressed her, how 
he would have fallen on his knees before 
her to beg her forgiveness. 

Could she have deceived his father ? — 
His father I It was true that he was an 
honest, an honorable man, but his rriind 
had never soared beyond the horizon of 
his shop. How could this woman, who 
was then very pretty, as he remembered 
and could still see, and gifted with a deli- 
cate, affectionate and tender soul, have 
accepted as a husband a man so different 
from herself ? 

But why search? She had married him 


170 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


as all young girls marry the well-to-do 
young man chosen by their parents. 
They had immediately established them- 
selves in their shop in the Rue Mont- 
martre, and the young wife presided at 
the counter, animated by the possession 
of a new home, by that sacred and subtile 
sense of common interests, that replaces 
love and even affection in the majority of 
marriages among the shop-keepers of 
Paris. She had worked with all the 
activity of her fine intelligence for the 
success of their business. And thus her 
life had glided on, uniform, tranquil, 
respectable, and without love. 

Without love? Was it possible that a 
woman should live without love? A 
woman, young and pretty, living in Paris, 
reading novels, applauding actresses who 
died of love on the stage; could she 
have gone from youth to old age without 
one single passion ? Of another he would 
not believe it; why should he believe it 
of his mother? 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Certainly, she might have loved, as 
well as another! for why should she be 
different from others, even if she were his 
mother? 

She had been young, and had experi- 
enced all the poetic nonsense that troubles 
the hearts of young people. Imprisoned 
in the shop, her only companion a vulgar 
husband, who spoke of nothing but trade; 
she had dreamed of moonlight walks, of 
travels, and of kisses given in the shadows 
of the night. And then, one day, a man 
had appeared, as lovers do in novels, and 
had spoken as they speak. 

She had loved him, and why not? She 
was his mother. Well, should he be 
blind and stupid enough to reject the 
evidence, because she was his mother? 

Had she given herself to him? — Un- 
doubtedly, since this man had had no 
other friend; — since he had remained 
faithful to her, even when she was at a 
distance and had grown old; — since he 


172 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


had left all his fortune to her son, to their 
son ! 

And Pierre arose, trembling with such 
fury that he wanted to kill somebody ! 
His arm extended, his hand wide open, 
ready to strike, to bruise, to crush, to 
strangle! Who? Everybody, his father, 
his brother, the dead, his mother! 

He rushed blindly toward home. What 
was he about to do ? 

As he passed a tower near the signal 
post, the siren shrieked its piercing cry 
almost in his ear. His surprise was so 
violent that he recoiled and almost fell 
against the granite parapet. 

The steamer that responded seemed 
very close, and, in fact, was entering the 
port with the high tide. 

Pierre turned and perceived its red eye 
obscured by fog ; then, under the diffused 
light of the electric fires of the port, a 
dark shadow was seen gliding between 
the two piers. Then, behind him, the 
hoarse voice of the guard called out : 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


173 


“ The name of the ship ? ” 

And from out of the fog the voice of 
the pilot, hoarse, also, responded : “Samfa- 
Lucia.” 

“ The country ? ” 

“ Italy.” 

“ The port ? ” 

“Naples.'” 

Then, before Pierre’s troubled eyes, 
arose a vision of the fiery crater of Ve- 
suvius, and at the foot of the volcano he 
saw the orange groves of Lorrento or 
Castellamare. How often he had dreamed 
of those familiar names, as if he had known 
the country. Oh! if he could only go, at 
once, no matter where, and never return, 
never write, never let them know what 
had become' of him! But no; he must 
return home, go back to the paternal 
house and go to bed. 

No, he would not return yet, he would 
await daylight. The voices of the sirens 
pleased him. He arose and walked up 
and down like an officer on duty. 


174 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Another enormous and mysterious ship 
came on behind the first. It was an Eng- 
lish steamer returning from India. 

He saw several others emerging, one 
after another, out of the impenetrable 
shadows. Then as the dampness of the 
fog was becoming intolerable, Pierre 
went on toward the city. He was so 
cold that he entered a sailor’s tavern for 
a glass of grog ; and when the hot and 
peppery brandy had burned his palate 
and throat, hope revived within him. 

He had been mistaken, perhaps. He 
knew his vagabond imagination so well! 
No doubt he was deceived. He had 
accumulated the proofs as we build up an 
indictment against an innocent person; 
always so easy to condemn when we 
wish to believe him guilty. After a good 
night’s sleep he would certainly think 
otherwise. 

Having reached this conclusion he 
hastened home, and, by mere force of 
will he at last fell into unconsciousness. 


CHAPTER V;.. 

Pierre tossed about restlessly on 
his bed, for an hour or two, in the agita- 
tion of a troubled sleep. When he 
awoke, in the obscurity of his chamber, 
even before thought had been rekindled 
within him, he felt that painful oppres- 
sion, that uneasiness of soul that survives 
even in sleep. It seemed as if the calam- 
ity, the shock of which merely hurt him 
the previous day, had, during his rest, 
glided into his very flesh, bruising and 
harassing it like a fever. Remembrance 
came back to him now and made him 
start up suddenly. 

Then he went over, one by one, all 
the arguments that had tortured his 
heart on the pier, while the sirens cried 
so loudly. And the more he thought the 
less he doubted. He felt himself drawn 
on by his logic as if by a hand that 


176 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


enticed and forced him toward the terri- 
ble certainty. 

He was hot, thirsty, and his heart was 
beating fast. He arose and opened the 
window to breathe the cool night air, and 
as he turned back to his bed a faint 
noise from the next room attracted his 
attention. 

Jean was tranquilly sleeping, and snor- 
ing softly. He could sleep ! He had no 
misgivings; he had guessed nothing. A 
man who had known their mother had 
left him his entire fortune; and he took 
the money without question, finding it 
but just and natural that it should be his. 

He was calmly sleeping, rich and sat- 
isfied, unconscious of the suffering and 
distress that harassed his brother. And 
a sudden hatred arose within him against 
this indifferent and contented dreamer. 

Even the day before, he would have 
knocked at the door and entered unhesi- 
tatingly ; then, seating himself by the bed, 
he would have said to him in the confu- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


177 


sion of his sudden awakening: “Jean, 
you must give up this legacy, which may 
cast suspicion on our mother’s honor.’’ 

But to-day it was too late, he could not 
speak ; he could not tell Jean that he did 
not believe him the son of their father. 
He must now bury this disgrace within 
himself, hide this stain from all eyes 
and let no one suspect it, not even his 
brother — his brother, above all. 

He no longer cared for the opinion of 
the public. The whole world might 
accuse his mother, what mattered, pro- 
vided he knew her innocent, he alone. 
How could he bear to live near her all the 
days of his life, and believe every time 
he looked at her that she had begotten 
his brother by the caress of a stranger. 

How calm and serene she was, never- 
theless, how self satisfied, in fact! Was 
it possible that a woman like her, with 
her purity of soul and uprightness of 
heart, could fall, through passion, without 


Pierre et Jean 


178 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


later feeling remorse, the stings of a 
troubled conscience. 

Ah ! she had undoubtedly been tort- 
ured by remorse in the first days, then 
it had grown less and less, finally becom- 
ing effaced as all things do. No doubt 
she had wept over her fault, and then, lit- 
tle by little, had almost forgotten it. 
Have not all women that prodigious 
faculty of forgetting, which permits them 
in a few years, to pass the man to whom 
they have given their life and themselves, 
without even a thought. The kiss 
strikes like a thunderbolt, love passes 
like a shower; then life again resumed its 
tranquillity like the sky. Do we remem- 
a passing cloud ? 

Pierre could no longer remain in his 
room ! This house — his father’s house 
— crushed him. He felt the weight of 
the roof on his head, and the walls suf- 
focated him. Being very thirsty, he 
lighted his candle and went down to the 
kitchen for a glass of fresh water. 


PIERRE ET JEAN- 


179 


He descended to the first floor and 
filling- a pitcher -with it he returned to the 
stairway, where the circulating air had 
cooled the atmosphere, and seating him- 
self on the first steps, he drank the cool- 
ing liquid in long draughts like an ex- 
hausted runner. When he had ceased to 
move, the silence of the house oppressed 
him; then, little by little, the faintest noise 
became audible. First it was the dining- 
room clock whose ticking seemed louder 
with every second. Then he distinguished 
the painful and labored breathing of an 
old person — his father no doubt; and the 
thought that these two men sleeping so 
peacefully under the same roof were 
nothing to each other, contracted his 
heart as if the conviction had just come 
to him. No link, not even the slightest, 
united them, and they knew it not. They 
spoke affectionately to each other, em- 
braced, were rejoiced and moved by the 
same things as if the same blood flowed 
in their veins. And two persons, born at 


i8o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


the two extremities of the earth, could 
not be greater strangers to each other 
than this father and son. They believed 
they loved each other because a lie had 
grown between them. It was a lie that 
made this paternal and filial love, a lie 
impossible to unveil and that no one 
would ever know but him — the true son. 

And yet, and yet if he should be 
deceived ? How could he find out ? 
Oh ! if a resemblance, however slight, 
only existed between his father and Jean ; 
one of those mysterious resemblances* 
transmitted from generation to genera- 
tion, showing that a whole race descends 
directly from the same source. It would 
require so little to be recognizable to the 
experienced eye of a physician, the form 
of the jaw, the curve of the nose, the 
position of the eyes, the nature of the 
teeth or of 'the hair, or even a gesture; a 
habit, a manner, an inherited taste, or a 
characteristic sign of whatever kind 
would have been sufficient. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


l8l 


He searched, but he could recall 
nothing ; no, nothing. However, having 
had no reason to search for these imper- 
ceptible indications he had never observed 
closely. 

He went slowly up the stairs, still 
thinking. As he passed his brother’s 
door he stopped short, and involuntarily 
extended his hand to open it. An im- 
perious desire to see Jean at once, seized 
him; to examine him closely, to surprise 
him in his sleep while the features were 
distended in repose, while all expression 
of life had disappeared. He would thus 
seize the sleeping secret of his physiog- 
nomy, and if any appreciable resem- 
blance existed, it would not escape him. 

But if Jean awoke, what would he say? 
How would he explain his presence there ? 
He remained standing there, his fingers 
clutching the knob and searching for a 
reason or a pretext. 

He suddenly remembered that a few 
days previous he had loaned his brother 


i 82 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


a vial of laudanum to calm an aching 
tooth. Might he not need it himself to- 
night, and come in to get it. He then 
entered, but with the stealthy step of a 
thief. 

Jean, with his lips slightly parted, was 
sleeping soundly ; his fair hair and beard 
appearing like a spot of gold on the white 
pillow. He did not awake, but his heavy 
breathing ceased. 

Pierre bent over and contemplated him 
with a searching eye. No, this young 
man did not resemble a Roland ; and for 
the second time the remembrance of 
Marechal’s portrait came to his mind. 
He must find it! Perhaps when he saw 
it he would doubt no longer. 

His brother moved, disturbed, no doubt, 
by his presence or by the rays of the can- 
dle penetrating his eye-lids. Then Pierre 
walked softly back to the door, closed it 
noiselessly and returned to his own room, 
but not to his bed. 

The day was slow in coming. The 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


183 


hours struck, one after the other, with a 
deep and solemn sound, as if that little 
instrument of clock-work in the dining- 
room had swallowed a cathedral bell. 
The tones ascended the empty stairway, 
pierced the walls and doors, and died 
away in the deaf ears of the sleepers. 
Pierre resumed his agitated walk between 
his bed and the window. What would 
he do ? He felt too much disturbed to 
spend the day at home with the family. 
He must be alone until to-morrow, at 
least ; he must reflect, calm and foftify 
himself for the daily life he must now re- 
sume. 

Very well; he would go to Trouville, 
and watch the gay crowd on the sea- 
shore. It would amuse him, change the 
current of his thoughts, and give him time 
to prepare himself to bear in silence the 
horrible discovery he had made. 

As soon as daylight appeared he 
dressed himself. The mist had evapor- 
ated under the rays of the rising sun, and 


184 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


the morning was beautiful. As the boat 
did not leave for Trouville until nine 
o’clock, he would have to kiss his mother 
before leaving. 

He awaited her usual rising hour, and 
then went down to her room; his heart 
beat so violently as he reached the door 
that he was obliged to stop to catch his 
breath. His hand trembled so much that 
he was almost incapable of the slight 
effort required to turn the knob and 
enter. He knocked, and the voice of his 
mother asked: “ Who is it? ” 

“ It is I, Pierre,” he replied. 

“ What do you want? ” she asked. 

“To say good-by, as I am going to 
spend the day at Trouville with some 
friends.” 

“But I am still in bed,” she said. 

“Very well; I will not disturb you 
then. I can kiss you when I return this 
evening.” 

He hoped he might leave without see- 
ing her; without imprinting upon her 










PIERRE ET JEAN 


cheek that false kiss, so repugnant to his 
feelings. 

“ I will open the door,” she called out, 
“ and then you wait a moment while I 
return to bed.” 

He heard her bare feet on the floor, 
and then the slight noise of the key in the 
lock; then she bade him come in. 

When he entered she was sitting up in 
the bed, while at her side, with his face 
to the wall and a silk handerchief over 
his head, Roland was sleeping soundly. 
Nothing but a violent shaking ever 
awoke him. On his fishing days the 
sailor Papagris would call the servant 
at the appointed hour, and she in turn 
would tear her master from his invincible 
slumber. 

As he went toward her, Pierre looked 
at his mother, and it suddenly seemed to 
him that he had never seen her before. 

She offered her cheeks, and he kissed 
her, then sat down beside the bed on a 
low chair. 


i86 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“Did you decide to go last night?” 
she asked. 

“Yes, last night,” he replied. 

“You will be back to dinner?” she 
continued. 

“ I do not know yet. But you need 
not wait. ” 

He was examining her with a stupefied 
curiosity. This woman was his mother! 
That whole figure seen from his infancy, 
that smile, that voice so well known and 
so familiar, suddenly appeared strange to 
him, different from what they had been 
until then. He now understood that, lov- 
ing her, he had never examined her feat- 
ures closely. He knew well all the little 
details of her countenance, but he now 
saw them clearly for the first time. His 
anxious eyes searched the loved features, 
revealing them in a new light, with an 
expression he had never before discov- 
ered. 

He started to go, then suddenly giving 
away to the invincible desire of obtaining 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


187 


that knowledg-e which had been devour- 
ing- his heart since the previous night, he 
said: 

“ I think I remember having seen a 
small portrait of Marechal in our parlor 
at Paris.” 

She hesitated for a moment or two; 
or, at least, he imagined she hesitated; 
then she replied : 

“Why, yes, we had one.” 

“ What has become of it ? ” he asked, 
eagerly. 

“That portrait — wait,” she answered, 
hesitatingly. “I don’t quite remember 
— perhaps it is in my desk.” 

“ I wish you would try to find it,” he 
rejoined. 

“ I will look for it,” she said; “ why do 
you want it ? ” 

“ Oh ! it is not for myself,” he said, 
quickly. “ I thought it would be only 
natural to give it to Jean, and it would 
please him.” 

“Yes, you are right,” she said; “it is 


i88 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


a good idea. I will look for it as soon as 
I am up."” 

He kissed her again, hurriedly, and 
went out. 

The sky was blue and there was not a 
breath of wind. Everybody he met 
seemed in high spirits; the merchants 
going to their business; the professional 
men to their offices; the young girls to 
the shops; all seemed enlivened by the 
beauty of the day. 

The passengers were already embark- 
ing for Trouville when Pierre reached 
the boat. 

“ Was she troubled by my question 
about the portrait,” he was asking him- 
self, “ or was it only surprise ? Has she 
lost or hidden it ? Does she or does she 
not know where it is ? Why should she 
hide it ? ” 

And his thoughts still following the 
same course, from deduction to deduction, 
arrived at this conclusion. 

The portrait of this friend or lover had 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


189 


remained in the parlor until the day when 
the wife, or the mother, had, for the first 
time, perceived that the portrait resem- 
bled her son. She had, undoubtedly, 
long watched for this resemblance; then 
having discovered it, having seen its birth, 
and understanding that any one might, 
one day or another, also perceive it, she 
had hidden this formidable little painting, 
not daring to destroy it. 

And Pierre now remembered that this 
portrait had disappeared long ago; long 
before their departure from Paris. It 
had disappeared, he believed, when Jean’s 
beard began to grow, suddenly giving 
him a strong resemblance to the fair 
young man smiling in the frame. 

The movement of the departing boat 
troubled and dispersed his thoughts, and 
he looked around him at the sea. 

The little steamer soon emerged from 
between the piers, turned to the left, puf- 
fing and shivering, and made for the dis- 
tant hills barely visible in the early mist. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


190 

From time to time they passed the red 
sail of a clumsy fishing boat, motionless 
on the calm sea, and appearing like a big 
rock emerging from the water. And the 
Seine descending from Rouen seemed 
like an immense arm of the sea separating 
two neighboring countries. 

In less than an hour they arrived at 
the port of Trouville, and as it was time 
for bathing, Pierre proceeded at once to 
the beach. 

From a distance it looked like a long 
garden filled with dazzling flowers. On 
the long stretch of yellow sand, from the 
pier to the Roches-Noires, were parasols 
of all colors, hats of every shape, toilets 
of every shade, in groups in front of the 
cabins, in lines along the beach or dis- 
persed here and there, really resembling 
enormous bouquets on a boundless prai- 
rie. The confused murmur of voices car- 
ried on the light breeze from far and 
near, the calls, the cries of the bathing 
children and the joyous laughter of the 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


I9I 


women made a continual hum that min- 
gled with the soft, insensible breeze, and 
fell on the ear like a gay melody. 

Pierre walked in the midst of these 
people, more lost and isolated, more 
deeply immersed in his torturing thoughts, 
and more apart from them than if he had 
been thrown into the sea from the deck 
of a ship a hundred leagues from the 
shore. He brushed against them, heard 
the voices without knowing what was 
said, and without noticing the compli- 
ments of the men and the smiles of the 
women. 

But suddenly he awoke from his torpor 
and looked around on this gay throng ; 
and a hatred arose in his heart against 
them, because they seemed so happy and 
contented. 

Then his thoughts again turned into a 
new channel, and he mingled with the 
groups of pleasure-seekers. All those 
varied colored toilets dotting the sands 
like bright flowers, the pretty fabrics, the 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


T92 

conspicuous parasols, the fictitious grace 
of the imprisoned waists; all the ingenious 
inventions of fashion, from the dainty shoe 
to the extravagant hat, the charm of 
gestures, voice and smile, in a word all 
the coquetry displayed on this beach sud- 
denly appeared to his eyes like an im- 
mense exhibit of feminine perversity. 
All these women were decked to please, 
charm and tempt some one. They had 
beautified themselves to attract men; all 
men except their husbands, whom they 
no longer cared to charm. They had 
adorned themselves to please the lover of 
to-day or of to-morrow; for the unknown 
whom they had met, remarked and, per- 
haps, awaited. For those men seated at 
their side, whose looks and words burned 
with passion and desire; and who pur- 
sued them with the ardor and patience of 
a hunter chasing a shy and wary animal. 

These vast downs were then only a 
market-place for lovers, where some sold 
and others gave themselves; some bar- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


193 


tered, while others simply promised their 
caresses. Ah these women were ani- 
mated by the same thought — the desire 
of offering the caresses that were already 
given, promised or sold to another. And 
Pierre reflected bitterly that women were 
the same in every station of life. 

His mother had done like others, that 
was all! Like others? No! there were 
many — many exceptions! These women 
around him were rich, foolish and in 
search of lovers; they belonged to the 
elegant world, or even, perhaps, to the 
demi-monde; for, on this beach, crowded 
with idle people, one does not see the 
devoted wife and mother. 

The tide was coming in, chasing the 
bathers toward the city. The groups 
also dispersed, taking up their seats hur- 
riedly and running before the yellow 
wave fringed with white foam. The mov- 
able bathing-cabins, drawn by horses, 
were also removed from the reach of the 
sea; and the elegant throng on the prom- 

T'ierre et Jesn 13 


194 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


enade was now all haste and confusion, 
forming two contrary currents elbowing 
and jostling each other. Pierre, nervous 
and exasperated by this confusion, turned 
his steps toward the city and entered a 
small wine shop on the outskirts, where 
he breakfasted. 

When he had taken his coffee, he 
stretched himself on two chairs before 
the door, and as he had slept but little 
the night before, he soon fell into a sound 
sleep under the cool shade of the linden- 
trees. 

After a few hours of rest he awoke, and 
consulting his watch, saw that he had 
barely time to return to the boat; he 
set off at once in the direction of the 
quay, oppressed by a painful weariness 
that had come over him during his sleep. 
He was now anxious to reach home and 
learn if his mother had found Marechal’s 
portrait. “Would she be the first to 
speak of it,” he asked himself, “ or would 
he be obliged to inquire for it again?” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


195 


If she did not mention it herself, it must 
be that she had a secret reason to keep 
it hidden. 

But when he reached his own room, 
he hesitated. His troubled heart had not 
yet had time to calm its agitation, and 
he dreaded meeting her. By a strong 
effort, however, he controlled his feelings 
and made his appearance in the dining- 
room as the rest of the family was sitting 
down to dinner. 

“Well!” old Roland was saying 
gaily, “how are you getting on with your 
purchases ? As for me, I don’t want to 
see anything till the house is all fur- 
nished.” 

“ Oh, we are getting on well,” replied 
his wife, smiling; “but it takes a long 
time to choose everything properly, and 
we are anxious to have all in good 
taste.” 

She had spent the day in visiting 
paper hangers and furniture stores with 
Jean. She wanted rich and pompous 


196 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


hangings and furniture; something to 
strike the eye; while her son, on the con- 
trary, desired everything simple and 
elegant. And at each proposed pur- 
chase they repeated all their argu- 
ments. She claimed that it was impor- 
tant that the client on entering the offices 
should be impressed by his rich sur- 
roundings. 

Jean, on the contrary, caring only for 
the patronage of the rich and elegant 
class, wished to impress by his modest 
and refined taste. 

And the discussion that had lasted all 
day was resumed with their soup. 

Roland, who had no opinions on the 
matter, repeated: “ I don’t want to hear 
anything about it, but will go and see it 
when it is all ready.” 

Mme. Roland now appealed to the 
judgment of her elder son. 

‘‘Now, Pierre, what do you think of 
it?” she asked. 

His nerves were so unstrung that he 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


197 


almost replied with an oath, but, master- 
ing his emotion, he said drily, his voice 
trembling with irritation : 

“Oh! I am of Jean’s opinion. I love 
simplicity, for simplicity is to taste what 
uprightness is to character.” 

“ But you must remember that we are 
living in a provincial city,” she rejoined, 
“where good taste is not much appreci- 
ated.” 

“And is that a reason why we should 
imitate fools ? ” said Pierre, angrily. “ If 
my neighbors are stupid or dishonest, am 
I obliged to follow their example } A 
woman is not obliged to commit a fault 
simply because her neighbors have 
lovers.” 

“Your arguments and comparisons 
sound as if drawn from the maxims of a 
moralist,” laughed Jean. 

Pierre made no reply, and his mother 
and brother resumed their discussion on 
drapings and furniture. 

He watched them curiously, as he had 


198 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


watched his mother in the morning before 
his departure for Trouville, seeing them 
with the eyes of an observing stranger 
who is suddenly transferred to the midst 
of an unknown family. 

His father, especially, astonished his 
eyes and thoughts. This big indolent 
man, contented and stupid, was his father! 
No, Jean certainly resembled him in 
nothing. 

His family! Since two days an un- 
known and malevolent hand, the hand of 
a dead man, had broken, one by one, all 
the links that held these four beings to- 
gether. It was all over. He no longer 
had a mother, for he could not cherish 
and venerate her with that tender, pious, 
and absolute respect, which should fill a 
son’s heart; he no longer had a brother, 
since that brother was the child of a 
stranger; his father alone remained; that 
big man whom he did not love. 

“Did you find that portrait, mother?” 
he asked, suddenly. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


199 


Which portrait? ” she asked, her eyes 
opening in surprise. 

“ Marechal’s portrait,” he replied. 

“ No — that is, yes — I have not found 
it, she replied, “ but I think I know where 
it is.” 

“ What was that,” asked Roland. 

“ A small portrait of Marechal,” Pierre 
explained; “it used to hang in our parlor 
at Paris. I thought Jean might like to 
have it.” 

“Ah! yes, yes, I remember itperfectly,” 
cried Roland. “Why, I saw it only a 
couple of weeks ago. Your mother took 
it out of her secretary while arranging 
her papers. You must remember Louise; 
why, come to think of it, it was only 
Thursday or Friday of last week. I was 
shaving myself, when you took it out of a 
drawer and put it on a chair beside you 
with a lot of letters, half of which you 
afterward burned. Humph! how queer 
that you should have had that portrait in 
your hands scarcely three days before 


200 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Jean’s inheritance came. If I believed in 
presentiments, I should say that was one.” 

“Yes, yes, I know where it is,” she 
replied, tranquilly; “ I will get it by-and- 
by.” 

Then she had lied! she had lied to her 
son that morning, when he asked her 
what had become of that portrait, and 
she had replied: “I don’t quite remem- 
ber, perhaps it is in my desk.” 

She had seen, touched, handled and 
contemplated it a few days before, then 
she had again hidden it in a secret 
drawer with letters — with his letters. 

Pierre looked at his mother with the 
exasperated anger of a deceived son, 
robbed of his most sacred affections, and 
with the jealousy of a man who has long 
been blind and suddenly discovers a 
shameful treachery. If he, her son, had 
been the husband of this woman, he 
would have seized her by the wrists, by 
the shoulders, or by the hair, he would 
have struck her to the ground, bruised 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


201 


and crushed! And he could say, do, 
show or reveal nothing. He was only 
her son; he had nothing to avenge, for 
he was not the deceived one. 

But yes! she had deceived him in his 
love and in his filial respect for her. For 
to him, she should be above reproach, as 
all mothers should be to their children. 
If the fury aroused within him was so 
near to hatred, it was that he felt her to 
be more guilty toward him than even 
toward his father. 

The love between man and wife is a 
voluntary compact, and the one who 
weakens is only guilty of perfidy; but 
when the wife becomes a mother, her 
obligations are greater, since nature has 
confided a race to her. And if she then 
succumbs, she is base, unworthy and in- 
famous! 

“ After all,” suddenly said old Roland, 
stretching his legs under the table, as he 
always did after dinner, to sip his glass of 
wine, “it -is not half bad to live without 


202 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


working when we have a fair income. I 
hope that Jean will give us fine dinners 
now, even if I do run the risk of making 
myself sick.” Then, turning to his wife, 
he continued: 

“I wish you would get that portrait, 
my dear, now that you are through your 
dinner. I am quite anxious to see it 
again.” 

She arose without a word, took up a 
candle and went out. After an absence, 
which seemed intolerably long to Pierre, 
but which, in fact, was less than three 
minutes, she returned smiling, and hold- 
ing an old-fashioned gilded frame by the 
ring. 

“ There,” she said, quietly. “ I found 
it immediately.” 

Pierre was the first to extend his hand 
for the portrait, and, holding it at arm’s 
length, examined it closely. Then, feel- 
ing his mother’s eyes on him, he looked 
from it to his brother, comparing the lat- 
ter with the portrait, and in hts rage he 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


203 


almost cried out : “ It does resemble 

Jean! ” If he dared not pronounce these 
redoubtable words, he nevertheless mani- 
fested his thought by his manner of com- 
paring the living and the painted features. 

There certainly existed something in 
common between the two ; the same beard 
and the same forehead, but nothing pre- 
cise enough to permit him to declare : 
“They are father and son.’’ It was 
rather a family resemblance, the similarity 
of physiognomy which pervades the same 
blood. But something more decisive 
than this resemblance of feature struck 
Pierre. His mother had arisen and turned 
her back under the pretense of putting 
away the sugar and wine into the side- 
board. She then understood that he knew 
or at least suspected the truth. 

“ Let me see it,’’ said Roland. 

Pierre handed him the miniature, and 
the old man pulled the candle closer to 
him, that he might see it better. 

“ Poor fellow! ’’ he murmured, in a sad 


204 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


tone, “to think that he looked like ’that 
when we first knew him. Cristi! how 
fast time goes. He was a handsome 
man at that time, and had such pleasant 
manners, didn’t he, Louise? ” 

As his wife made no response, he went 
on; “And what an even temper he had! 
I never saw him in bad humor. And to 
think it’s all over; nothing left — except 
what he left to Jean. In a word, we must 
say that he was a good and faithful 
friend to the end. He did not even for- 
get us in death.’’ 

Jean in his turn took the portrait, and, 
contemplating it a few moments, said, 
regretfully: “ I cannot recognize him at 
all. I only remember him with white hair.’’ 

And he returned the miniature to his 
mother. She looked at it with a rapid, 
furtive glance that was mingled with 
fear; then she said in her natural voice: 
“It is yours now, my Jeannot, since you 
are his heir. We must take it to your 
new home.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


205 


She then entered the parlor and placed 
the miniature portrait on the chimney- 
piece, near the clock, where it had for- 
merly been. 

Roland filled his pipe, while Pierre and 
Jean lighted cigarettes; the latter sunk 
into a deep arm-chair and crossed his 
legs indolently, and Pierre walked up 
and down the room, while the father 
seated himself astride his chair as usual, 
and spat into the fire-place. 

Mme. Roland, seated on a low chair 
near the little table that held the lamp, 
either knitted, embroidered or marked 
linen. 

This evening she was commencing a 
piece of tapestry destined to the embel- 
lishment of Jean’s bedroom. It was a 
difficult and complicated work, requiring 
her whole attention. Nevertheless, from 
time to time, she raised her eyes furtively 
from the stitches she was counting to the 
miniature of the dead that stood on the 
chimney-piece. And the young doctor. 


206 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


walking rapidly up and down the nar- 
row parlor, his hands behind his back 
and cigarette between his lips, lost none 
of those stolen glances. 

Both seemed to realize that a struggle 
had begun, and they watched each other 
anxiously ; a painful uneasiness, an un- 
bearable uneasiness contracting Pierre’s 
heart. Satisfied, yet tortured, he was 
saying to himself : “ How she must 

suffer at this moment if she knows that 
I have guessed ; ” and each time he 
passed the fire-place, he stopped to con- 
template the fair-haired Marechal that she 
might understand that he was haunted 
by a fixed idea. This little portrait, 
scarcely as large as the open hand, 
seemed like a redoubtable living person 
suddenly placed in the midst of this 
family. 

Suddently a ring was heard at the 
door. Mme. Roland, usually so calm, 
started at the sound, thereby revealing 
her nervousness to the young doctor. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


207 


“ It must be Mme. Rosemilly,” she said, 
and her anxious eye was raised once more 
to the chimney. 

Pierre understood, or thoug-ht he un- 
derstood, her terror and anguish. The 
look of a woman is piercing, her mind 
active, and her thoughts suspicious. 
When Mme. Rosemilly entered, she 
would perceive the unknown miniature at 
a first glance, and perhaps even discover 
the resemblance between it and Jean. 
Then she would know and understand 
all ! A sudden and horrible fear that this 
disgrace should be unveiled came over 
him, and, as the door opened, he turned, 
and, taking the little portrait, hid it be- 
hind the clock before his father or 
brother had time to see him. 

As he turned, he again met the, eyes of 
his mother, they seemed changed, 
troubled and haggard. 

“ Good-evening,” Mme. Rosemilly was 
saying, “ I have came down to take a cup 
of tea with you. ” 


208 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


While the rest of the family came for- 
ward to greet her, Pierre disappeared 
through the still opened door. 

When they perceived his departure 
they all expressed their astonishment; 
Jean, fearing that the young widow might 
feel hurt, was greatly vexed. 

“ What a bear! ” he muttered. 

“You must not pay any attention to 
him,” said his mother, apologizingly; “he 
is not well, and, besides, his trip to Trou- 
ville has tired him.” 

“ That is no reason why he should act 
like an uncivilized being;” growled old 
Roland. 

“ Oh I ” said Mme. Rosemilly, trying 
to smooth matters, “he simply took his 
leave ‘ a T an^laise;’ that is how society 
people do when they wish to retire early.” 

“ Oh!” said Jean, “in the world it is 
possible; but one should not treat his 
family a V anglaise, as my brother has 
done for the last few days.” 


CHAPTER VI. 

Things went on thus in the Roland 
family for a week or two. The father 
went fishing, as usual; Jean and his 
mother were busy with the arrangements 
of the new apartments; and Pierre, more 
gloomy than ever, was never seen, except 
at meals. 

“ Why in the d are you looking 

so glum?” snarled his father one night. 
“ This is not the first time that I’ve 
noticed it, either.” 

“ It is because life has become a bur- 
den to me,” replied Pierre. 

The old man did not understand, but 
added, in a disconsolate air; 

” Upon my word that is too much. 
Since we had the luck of that inheritance, 
everybody seems unhappy; as if we had 
met with an accident; as if we were 
mourning for some one.” 

Pierre et Jean 14 209 


210 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ I am, indeed, mourning some one,” 
said Pierre. 

“You? Who can it be?” asked Ro- 
land, in surprise. 

“ Oh! somebody you do not know, and 
whom I loved very much,” added Pierre. 

“ A woman, of course? ” demanded the 
father, imagining it must be a love affair 
with some light character. 

“ Yes, a woman. ” 

“ Is she dead? ” asked the old man, in- 
quisitively. 

“No, worse than that, lost.” 

“Ah I ” exclaimed the old man, briefly. 

Though astonished at this unexpected 
confidence, in the presence of his wife 
and in that odd manner, he did not insist 
on further explanation, for he considered 
that such matters did not concern a third 
person. 

Mme. Roland seemed not to have 
heard; she appeared ill, and was very 
pale. Many times, of late, her husband 
had been surprised to see her sink into 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


21 I 


her chair and gasp for breath, as if about 
to faint. 

“Really, Louise,” he had said to her, 
“you look quite ill. You are tiring your- 
self too much fixing up Jean’s apartments. 
Take a little rest. Sacristi! The boy is 
in no hurry, since he is rich.” 

But she had simply shaken her head 
without replying. 

This day, however, her pallor was so 
apparent that Roland again remarked it. 

“ See here, my poor Louise,” said he, 
“this will never do; you must take care 
of yourself.” Then, turning to Pierre, he 
added, angrily, “ Don’t you see that your 
mother is suffering? Have you exam- 
ined her, at least ? ” 

“No,” replied Pierre; “I have not 
noticed that there was anything the mat- 
ter with her.” 

“ Why, a blind man could see it,” said 
old Roland, furiously. “ What’s the use 
of being a doctor then, if you can’t even 
see that your mother is indisposed ? But 


2 I 2 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


just look at her ! Upon my word we 
might all be dying, and this precious 
doctor would not even suspect it ! ” 

Mme. Roland was now gasping for 
breath, and had become so pale that her 
husband cried in alarm; “ Why she is 
going to faint ! ” 

“No — no — ” she gasped, “it is noth- 
ing — it will pass off — it is nothing.” 

Pierre had approached, and was look- 
ing at her, fixedly. 

“ Let us see what it is,” he said. 

But she repeated, in a low voice: “ It 
is nothing — nothing — I assure you — 
nothing.” 

Roland, who had gone in search of a 
bottle of vinegar, now returned and, 
handing it to his son, cried out, im- 
patiently: “There — why don’t you do 
something for her? Have you felt her 
pulse, at least ? ” 

As Pierre leaned over to feel her pulse 
she withdrew her hand so abruptly that 
she struck it on a chair near her. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


213 


“Come,” said he, coldly, “let me do 
something for you, since you are ill/' 

She then extended her hand to him. 
Her skin was burning, and her pulse 
quick and irregular. 

“ It is serious, indeed,” he said. “ I 
will make out a prescription; you require 
something to quiet your nerves. ” 

As he bent over the paper to write, he 
heard the sound of suppressed and chok- 
ing sobs, and, turning suddenly, he saw 
she was weeping, her face buried in her 
hands. 

“Louise, Louise,” cried old Roland, 
distractedly, “ what is the matter, tell me 
what it is ? ” 

But she did not reply, and seemed 
overwhelmed by a deep and terrible 
sorrow. 

Her husband tried to remove her hands 
from her face, but she resisted, repeating 
“ No, no, no ! ” 

Then, turning to his son, he asked, ex- 


214 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


excitedly, “ why, what can be the matter ? 
I have never seen her like that.” 

“ It is nothing,” said Pierre; “ only a 
slight nervous attack.” 

And it seemed to him that his own 
heart was relieved to see her tortured thus ; 
that this suffering lightened his own 
resentment and diminished his mother’s 
debt of opprobrium. He contemplated 
her as a judge, satisfied with his work. 

But suddenly she arose, and rushing 
through the door, was gone, and had 
locked herself in her room before either 
of them could say a word. 

“Can you understand what ails her?” 
asked Roland, anxiously. 

“Oh yes,” replied the young doctor; 
“women of her age are subject to such 
nervous attacks. It is probable that she 
will have more like them.” 

In fact, she did have more of such at- 
tacks. They occurred nearly every day, 
and Pierre seemed to provoke them by a 
word, as if he possessed the secret of 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


215 


this strang-e and unknown disease. He 
watched her features for those short 
intervals of repose, and then, with the 
cunning- of a torturer, he reawakened, by 
a single word, the pain that had been 
calmed for a moment. 

And he suffered as cruelly as she did. 
He suffered terribly at having lost his 
love and respect for her, and he suffered 
while he tortured her. When he had 
irritated the bleeding wound that he had 
opened in the heart of this wife and 
mother, when he felt how miserable and 
despairing she was, he would rush out 
alone, so torn by remorse, so overcome 
with pity, so grieved at having caused her 
to suffer by his filial contempt, that he 
was tempted to cast himself into the sea 
and end this torture. 

Oh! how he wished he could forgive 
now! but he could not, being unable to 
forget. If he could only prevent her suf- 
ferings, but he could not, he suffered so 
incessantly himself. He would go home 


2 l6 


PIERRE ET JEAN' 


at meal time, his heart filled with tender 
resolutions, but as soon as he saw her, as 
soon as his eyes met her gaze, formerly 
so firm and frank, and now so fleeting, 
timid and despairing, he struck involun- 
tarily, being unable to withhold the per- 
fidious phrases that arose to his lips. 

The infamous secret, known to them 
alone, embittered him against her. It 
was a venom that flowed in his veins, and 
that gave him a desire to bite and destroy 
like an enraged dog. 

Nothing now prevented him from har- 
assing her unceasingly, for Jean almost 
lived in his new apartments, coming home 
only to dine and sleep. 

Jean had often felt the malice and vio- 
lences of his brother, and attributed them 
to jealousy. He promised himself he 
would take his brother to task some day 
or other and give him a lesson, for the 
life of the family was becoming intoler- 
able from these continual scenes. But as 
he was now almost living away from 





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PIERRE ET JEAN 


217 


home, he suffered less from those bru- 
talities, and his love of traiiquillity re- 
strained his anger. Moreover, the for- 
tune he had inherited intoxicated him 
with its joys, and he was interested in 
little else than what concerned him 
directly. He came home, his mind filled 
with selfish considerations; preoccupied 
by the cut of a coat, the shape of a hat, 
or the proper size of visiting cards. He 
persistently spoke of all the details of 
his new home; a new shelf had been 
placed in his bedroom, or a wardrobe in 
the adjoining hall, and he explained, at 
length, the electric bells placed through- 
out the house as burglar alarms. 

It had been decided that on the occa- 
sion of his taking formal possession of 
his apartments, they would all go on an 
excursion to Saint-Jouin, when they 
would enjoy themselves until after din- 
ner, and then return to take tea with him 
in the new home. Roland wanted to go 
by sea, but the distance and the uncer- 


2i8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


tainty of the wind, besides other reasons, 
were urged against this plan, and finally 
a carriage was rented and they started off 
about ten o’clock, that they might arrive 
for breakfast. 

The undulations of the plains and the 
beautiful trees surrounding the farms gave 
this Norman country, through which 
stretched the dusty road, the appearance 
of an endless park. Inside the carriage, 
drawn by two big horses, the Roland 
family, Mme. Rosemilly and Captain 
Beausire, deafened by the noise of wheels 
and blinded by clouds of dust, were for 
once silent. 

It was harvest time, and many farmers 
were already gathering in their crops. 
In the fields, already attacked by the 
scythes, the laborers were swinging their 
long, wing-shaped blades close to the 
soil. Beside the deep green of the clover 
and the bright green of the beet, the yel- 
low wheat brightened up the scenery with 
its golden hue, seeming to have drunk in 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


219 

the brilliant light of the sun that streamed 
upon it. 

After a drive of two hours through this 
delightful country, the carriage turned to 
the left, passing by a dilapidated wind-mill, 
a melancholy wreck, half-rotten and de- 
serted, the last survivor of the old- 
fashioned mills. They then entered a 
pretty court-yard, and stopped before a 
cozy, cheerful-looking house, the cele- 
brated tavern of the country. 

The hostess, familiarly known as la 
belle Alphonsine, soon appeared in the 
door, smiling, and extended her hand to 
the two ladies, who were hesitating in 
front of the very high steps. 

Under a tent, pitched on the turf be- 
neath the sheltering shades of the apple 
trees, guests were already breakfasting — 
Parisians returning from Etretat — and 
from the interior of the house came the 
sound of joyous laughter and the clatter 
of dishes. 

As all the dining-rooms were occupied 


220 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


they were obliged to take their breakfast 
in a private room. They had scarcely 
taken their seats a; the table when Ro- 
land suddenly saw a lot of prawn nets 
hanging against the wall. 

“Ah!” cried he, “they fish for prawns 
here! ” 

“Yes,” replied Beausire, “ this is the 
best fishing place on the coast.” 

“ Bigre!" exclaimed Roland, “ suppose 
we go after breakfast.” 

“As the tide was quite low at three 
o’clock, they decided that the entire party 
should spend the afternoon searching for 
prawns among the rocks. 

They, therefore, ate sparingly, to avoid 
a rush of blood to the head while walk- 
ing about in the water. Besides, they 
wished to reserve their appetite for the 
sumptuous dinner ordered for six o’clock. 

Roland could scarcely contain his impa- 
tience. He wanted to buy a lot of tackle 
designed especially for this kind of fish- 
ing, and which resembles the nets used to 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


221 


catch butterflies on the prairie. They 
were called lanets, and were simply small 
net bags attached to a wooden hoop at 
the end of a long stick. 

Alphonsine helped the ladies to impro- 
vise a toilet for the occasion, dressing 
them in short petticoats, coarse woolen 
stockings and strong shoes. The men 
removed their boots and replaced them 
by wooden shoes purchased from the 
shoemaker of the place; and, being pro- 
vided with nets by the smiling Alphon- 
sine, they were soon ready for the sport. 

Mme. Rosemilly, with her lanet over 
her shoulder and a basket on her back, 
looked quite coquettish and pretty in this 
improvised peasant costume. Her skirt, 
coquettishly turned up to allow her to 
run and jump freely among the rocks, 
displayed the pretty and well turned 
ankle of a supple young woman. On 
her dainty head she wore an immense 
garden hat of yellow straw, turned up on 
one side, and held in place by "a branch 


222 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


of tamarisk, which gave her a bold and 
dashing appearance. 

Since he had come into possession of 
the inheritance, Jean daily asked himself 
whether he should marry her or not. 
Each time he saw her he felt a decided 
desire of making her his wife, but as 
soon as he was again alone, his ardor 
abated somewhat, and he reflected that 
it might be wiser to wait. He was now 
richer than the young widow, for she 
possessed an income of barely twelve 
thousand francs; but then, again, her cap- 
ital was well invested in farms, and lots 
in Havre, which might later become very 
valuable. Therefore, their fortunes were 
almost equivalent, and, besides, she was 
certainly to his taste. 

Looking at her now, as she walked on 
ahead of him, he thought: “I must come 
to some decision. After all, I don’t think 
I could do better.” 

They were following a sloping valley 
that descended from the village toward 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


223 


the steep cliffs, which arose twenty-four 
meters above the sea. In this frame of 
green hills, sloping from the right and 
left, a large triangle of silvery blue water 
glistened in the sunlight, on which could 
be seen a sail, looking like a small insect, 
in the distance. The blue sea and bright 
sky were so closely intermingled, that it 
was impossible to distinguish where the 
one ended and the other commenced; 
and the figures of the two women, who 
preceded the three men, were clearly de- 
fined against the horizon. 

Jean’s eyes lighted up as he watched 
the shapely ankles, slender waist, and 
provoking hat of Mme. Rosemilly; his 
desire increasing with every step, and 
pushing him on to one of those decisive 
resolutions that come suddenly to hesi- 
tating and timid persons. The warm air, 
in which mingled the odor of the hills, of 
the clover, and of the leaves, and the saline 
smell of the uncovered rocks, combined 
to elate and animate him; and at each 


2 24 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Step, at every second, at every glimpse 
of the graceful form before him, his de- 
sire increased. And he decided to hesi- 
tate no longer, but to tell her at once 
that he loved her, and wanted her for his 
wife. The fishing would facilitate their 
tete-a-tete; moreover, the surroundings 
would make a pretty frame to their love 
making; with their feet in the limpid 
water, and watching the long-bearded 
shrimps, as they escaped under the sea- 
weeds. 

When they reached the edge of the 
precipice, they perceived a narrow path 
descending along the face of the cliff; 
and beneath them, about midway be- 
tween the sea and the foot of the preci- 
pice, could be seen a wonderful chaos of 
enormous rocks, crushed and piled 
against each other on a grassy and 
varied plain, that extended to the south 
as far as the eye could reach. On that 
long strip of brushwood and broken turf, 
as if thrown up from a volcano, the fallen 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


225 


rocks resembled the ruins of a great city 
that had formerly overlooked the ocean, 
and which in turn had been dominated 
by the endless white walls of the cliff. 

“ How beautiful! ” exclaimed Mme. 
Rosemilly. 

Jean had joined her, and with a beating 
heart he offered his hand to assist her in 
descending the narrow stairway cut into 
the rock. 

They went down ahead, while Beausire, 
straightening himself on his short legs, 
offered his arm to Mme. Roland, who 
was dizzied by the void below. 

Roland and Pierre came last ; the old 
man was so overcome by dizziness and 
fright, that he had to sit down on the 
rock and be dragged down from step to 
step by the young doctor. 

The young couple who had gone on 
quite fast, suddenly came upon a wooden 
bench, marking a place of rest near the 
middle of the declivity, and beside it a 
spring of clear water bubbled up from a 

l^i^rre et Jean 


226 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


hole in the rock. It first flowed into a 
basin as large as a tub, which it had worn 
away into the rock, then, falling in cas- 
cades scarcely two feet high, it crossed 
the path, over which had grown a carpet 
of water-cresses, and disappeared among 
the brambles and rocks strewn over this 
upheaved plain. 

“ How thirsty I am ! ” cried Mme. Rose- 
milly. 

But how was she to drink. She tried 
to gather a few drops in her hand, but it 
escaped through her Angers. Then an 
idea struck Jean ; he placed a stone in 
the pathway and she knelt on it, bringing 
her lips on a level with the spring. 

As she raised her head, covered with 
sparkling drops, scattered, in thousands 
over her face, her eyebrows and her 
hair, Jean leaned over her and murmured, 
“ How pretty you look.” 

“You must not say such things,” she 
replied, as if reproving a child. 

These were the first words of gallantry 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


227 


Jean had ever uttered to her, and he now- 
felt embarrassed. 

“Come,’'' he said, confusedly, ‘Met us 
run away before the others catch up to 
us.” 

In fact, Beausire’s back was just be- 
coming visible through the rocks, as he 
descended backward, assisting Mme. 
Roland with both hands. A little higher, 
Roland was still sliding down from step 
to step, propelling himself by his heels 
and elbows, and waddling like a turtle; 
while Pierre, who preceded him, watched 
over his movements. 

The path now became less steep, wind- 
ing among the enormous blocks of rocks 
fallen from the mountain; Mme. Rose- 
milly and Jean ran down the rest of the 
path and soon reached the pebbled shore, 
which they traversed to reach the rocks. 
These were scattered over a long flat sur- 
face covered with sea-weeds, through 
which glittered innumerable pools of 
water. The low sea could be seen over 


228 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


there, far away behind that plain, dotted 
by patches of dark sea-weeds. 

Jean rolled his pantaloons to the knees 
and his sleeves to the elbows; and crying 
out, “ Forward! ” jumped bravely into the 
first pool he met. 

Though fully intending to enter the 
water, the young woman was more pru- 
dent, walking around the narrow basin 
with cautious footsteps, for the clammy 
weeds were very slippery. 

“ Do you see anything ? she asked. 

“Yes, I see your face reflected in the 
water,” he replied. 

“ If that is all you see, you will not 
have much luck in fishing,” she retorted. 

“It is what I should prefer to capture 
above all things,” he murmured, ten- 
derly. 

“ Try it, and see how it will go through 
your net,” she laughed, 

“Ah! if you only would let me try,” 
he sighed. 

“ I want to see you catch prawns just 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


229 


now — and nothing more — for the pres- 
ent,” she replied. 

“ You are cruel,” he said. “ Let us go 
further, there is nothing here.” 

And he offered his hand to assist her 
in walking over the slippery rocks. She 
leaned on him, timidly, and he suddenly 
felt himself overwhelmed by love, filled 
with the desire of possessing her, as if 
the disease that had been germing within 
him had awaited that very day to burst 
forth. 

They soon reached a deeper crevice, 
where long, narrow, oddly-colored weeds 
seemed to swim under the shivering 
water that flowed to the distant sea 
through an invisible fissure. 

“There, there!” suddenly exclaimed 
Mme. Rosemilly, “I see one, a big one — 
a very big one — over there. ” 

He also saw it, and jumped resolutely 
into the hole, although the water reached 
up to his waist. 

But the fish, shaking his long mous- 


230 


PIERRE ET JEAN- 


taches, retired slowly in front of the net. 
Jean, feeling sure of his prize, pushed it 
toward the patch of sea- weeds, but, feeling 
himself blocked, the fish glided swiftly over 
the net, dashed across the pool and disap- 
peared. 

The young woman, who had been 
watching the chase intently, could not 
restrain a cry of disappointment. 

“Oh! how awkward,” she exclaimed. 

He was vexed, and, by a thoughtless 
movement, allowed his net to drag along 
the bottom among the sea-weeds, and, as 
he raised it again to the surface, he saw 
three large, transparent prawns within it, 
which he had blindly gathered from their 
invisible hiding place. 

He presented them triumphantly to 
Mme. Rosemilly, who did not dare take 
them at first, through fear of the sharp, 
jagged points with which their small 
heads are armed. 

However, she finally overcame her fear 
and taking them cautiously between two 


PIERRE ET JEAN- 


231 


fingers by the sharp points of their mous- 
taches, placed them into her basket with 
a little sea-weed to preserve them alive. 
Then, having found a shallow pool, she 
entered it with hesitating steps and, 
although chilled by the cold water, she 
cast her own net. She was skillful and 
wary, having a quick hand and the tact 
of an experienced fisherman. Almost at 
every venture she brought up fishes that 
she deceived and surprised by the ingen- 
iousness of her pursuit. 

Jean, meanwhile, was finding nothing, 
but followed her step by step, leaning 
over her, simulating great despair at his 
awkwardness and pleading to be taught. 

“Oh! do teach me!” he repeated, 
pleadingly. 

Then, as the two faces were reflected 
side by side in the clear water, rendered 
as transparent as a limpid mirror by the 
dark weeds at the bottom, Jean smiled 
at the face beside his own, that looked at 
him from below, and threw kisses from 


232 


PIERRE ET JEAN- 


the tips of his fingers that seemed to fall 
upon the pouting lips. 

“ How bothersome you are,” said the 
young woman, “ you should never try to 
do two things at once.” 

“ I am doing but one thing just now,” 
he replied, “ I love you.” 

“ What has come over you since the 
last ten minutes,” said the young woman, 
seriously, as she looked up; “ have you 
lost your senses ? ” 

“No; I have not lost my senses,” he 
replied, gravely. “ I love you, and at 
last dare to tell you.” 

They were standing in the salt sea- 
water up to their knees, with their nets 
in their hands and looking, searchingly, 
in each other’s eyes. 

“ How indiscreet of you,” she said, 
banteringly, “to speak of that at this 
moment ; could you not have waited 
another day, and not spoil my fishing ?” 

“ Forgive me,” he murmured, “ I have 
loved you so long I could keep silent no 



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PIERRE ET JEAN 


233 


longer. And to-day you have completely 
turned my head.” 

Then, suddenly, she seemed to have 
come to a decision — to forego pleasure 
and resign herself to speak of business 
matters. 

“Let us go and sit on that rock,” she 
said, “and we can talk, undisturbed.” 

They climbed the high rock and seated 
themselves side by side in the glare of 
the sun, with their feet dangling over the 
water. 

“My dear friend,” she then began, 
“you are no longer a child, and I am no 
longer a young girl. We both under- 
stand full well what we are about to dis- 
cuss, and we can weigh all the conse- 
quences of our words.and actions. If you 
declare your love for me to-day, I natur- 
ally suppose you wish to make me your 
wife.” 

He had little expected this plain and 
matter-of-fact statement of the situation. 


234 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


and could only reply, stupidly, “ Why, of 
course.” 

“ Have you spoken of this to your 
father and mother ? ” she went on. 

“No, I have not ; I wished to be sure 
of your acceptance first,” he replied. 

She extended her still wet hand and he 
caught it impulsively in his own. 

“ I am quite willing,” she said. “ I be- 
lieve you to be good and loyal. But bear 
in mind that I will do nothing to displease 
your parents.” 

“ Oh! do you think that my motj^gf has 
not foreseen all this, and that she would 
love you as she does if she did not desire 
a marriage between us ? ” 

“Nevertheless, I feel somewhat agi- 
tated,” she said. 

They were then silent. He was, on 
the contrary, astonished that she showed 
so little agitation, and remained so matter- 
of-fact. He had expected a coquettish 
refusal that would mean “ yes ; ” a love 
comedy that would mix itself with their 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


235 


fishing in the splashing waters. And it 
was all over! He felt himself bound, 
married, in fact, in twenty words. Now 
there was nothing more to say, since they 
understood each other, and they were 
silent, both a little embarrassed by what 
had passed between them so quickly. A 
little confused, in fact, not daring to speak, 
not caring to fish, and not knowing what 
to do. 

But old Roland came to their rescue. 

“Come quick!” he cried; “Come, chil- 
dren, ar|^ see Beausire, he is emptying 
the ocean.” 

The Captain was, indeed, having won- 
derful luck. He was wet to the waist, 
and went from puddle to puddle of water, 
recognizing the best place at a glance, and 
hunting every cavity hidden under the 
sea-weeds, by a slow and sure movement 
of his net. He would then take the 
beautiful, transparent prawns into his 
hand, and, by a quick gesture, throw them, 
still wriggling, into the basket. 


I 


236 PIERRE E T JEAN 

Madame Rosemilly was enchanted, 

and remained at his side, imitating him 
to the best of her ability — almost for- 
getting her promise to Jean, who fol- 
lowed her dreamily, in her childish de- 
light of gathering up these shrimps from 
under the floating weeds. 

“ Here comes my wife to join the 
sport,” said old Roland. 

Madame Roland and Pierre had re- 

mained alone on the beach, for neither ol 
them felt any desire to run about, jump- 
ing from rock to rock, and splashing in 
the water, and yet they hesitated to re- 
main there alone. She feared him, and 
her son feared her and himself — he 
feared the uncontrollable cruelty within 
him. 

As they sat, side by side, under the 
rays of the sun, tempered by the sea- 
breeze, gazing before them on the vast 
horizon of silvery-blue water, the same 
thought came to their mind, “How de- 
lightful this would have'been in other days.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


237 


She dared not speak to Pierre, know- 
ing that he would reply harshly; and he 
dared not address his mother, also feel- 
ing that, in spite of himself, his words 
would be severe. 

He was turning and beating the round 
pebbles with the end of his cane. She 
had picked up a few pebbles and was 
dropping them through her fingers from 
one hand to the other with a slow and 
mechanical gesture, while her gaze was 
fixed vaguely on the sea. Then, suddenly, 
her wandering eyes fell upon her son 
Jean and Mme, Rosemilly, fishing side 
by side amongst the sea weeds. She 
then followed and watched their move- 
ments, understanding, in a confused way, 
through her motherly instinct, that they 
were not conversing as on other days. 
She saw them bending over their re- 
flected images in the water; she watched 
them as they stood face to face, inter- 
rogating each other’s hearts, and as they 


238 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


climbed the rocks, where they exchanged 
their vows. 

Their outlines stood out clear and bold 
in the midst of this vast horizon of sky, 
sea and rocks. 

Pierre was also watching them, and 
suddenly a sarcastic laugh came from his 
lips. 

“What is the matter?” asked his 
mother, without turning. 

“ I am taking a lesson,” he laughed, 
scornfully; “lam learning how to pre- 
pare one’s self to become a cuckold.” 

She started, angrily, shocked by the 
word, and exasperated by the insinuation 
she thought she understood. 

“To whom does that apply?” she 
asked, severely. 

“To Jean, par bleu! ” he replied. “It 
is very comical to see them going on like 
that.” 

“Oh! Pierre, how cruel you are,” she 
murmured in a low voice, trembling with 
emotion. “That woman is uprightness 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


239 


itself. Your brother could never find a 
better wife.” 

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed, contemp- 
tuously. “ Uprightness itself ! All 

wives are models of uprightness and 

all the husbands are cockolds. Ha! ha! 
ha! ” 

She arose, without a word, and started 
quickly down the sloping beach, at the 
risk of slipping and falling into the fis- 
sures hidden under the grass, and of 
breaking her limbs; running on blindly, 
over stones, through pools of water, 
straight before her, toward her other 
son. 

“Well, mother!” exclaimed Jean, as 
he saw her, “ have you decided to try 
your luck, fishing? ” 

She seized his arm, as if to cry: “ Save 
me; defend me;” but could not utter a 
word. 

“ How pale you are !” he said, in sur- 
prise, as he saw her troubled looks; 
“ what is the matter? ” 


240 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ I almost slipped; I was frightened on 
the rocks, ” she stammered. 

Then Jean, guiding her from rock to 
rock, tried to interest her in fishing by 
explaining how the prawns were caught. 
But, as she did not appear to listen, and, 
as he felt the violent need of confiding in 
some one, he led her away from the 
others, and said, in a low voice: 

“ Guess what I have done? ” 

“But — but — I do not know,” she 
replied. 

“ Guess,” he insisted. 

“I — I cannot, ” she answered, ab- 
sently. 

“ Well, then, I suppose I must tell you,” 
he said, laughing. “ I have just told 
Mme. Rosemilly that I desired to marry 
her.” 

Her head was swimming, and her mind 
was in such distress that she scarcely un- 
derstood his words, but repeated vaguely 
after him: 

“ To marry her? ” 


PTERRE ET JEAN 


241 


“Yes; have I done well? Don’t 
you think her charming? ” he asked. 

“Yes — charming — you have done 
well,” she repeated. 

“Then you approve my choice?” he 
said, eagerly. 

“Yes — I approve,” she replied, ab- 
sently. 

“ How strangely you say that,” he said, 
anxiously. “One would think that — 
that — you were not pleased.” 

“ But, yes — lam — pleased,” she said. 

“Quite sure?” he asked. 

“Quite sure!” she repeated. 

. And to prove it, she seized him in her 
arms and covered his face with big, 
motherly kisses. 

Then, when she had dried her tears, 
she perceived, over there on the beach, 
a body stretched at full length like a 
corpse, the face buried in the pebbles. 
It was her other son — Pierre — strug- 
gling with his despair. 

Then she drew her “little Jean” still 

Pierre ct Jean 16 


242 


' PIERRE ET JEAN- 


further on, near the waves, and they 
spoke of this marriage which had been 
her dream since she had known the young 
woman. 

The tide now drove them back toward 
the fishing party, and they soon all 
started up the cliff again. As they 
passed Pierre, who was feigning sleep, 
they aroused him and hurried toward the 
hotel, for they were half famished. The 
dinner was very long and plentifully 
sprinkled with wine. 


CHAPTER VII. 


On the way back, all the men, with the 
exception of Jean, went to sleep in the 
carriage. Every few minutes Beausire 
and Roland would fall over against their 
neighbor, but were promptly shaken off. 
They would then start up, cease their 
snoring, open their eyes and mutter, inco- 
herently, “fine night,” then immediately 
fall over on the other side. 

By the time they reached Havre, their 
lethargy was so profound that the others 
found it difficult to arouse them ; and 
Beausire absolutely refused to go to 
Jean’s apartments, where they were to 
take tea, insisting on being deposited at 
his own door. 

The young lawyer was to sleep in his 
new home for the first time that night ; 

and he was suddenly filled with a puerile 
243 


244 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


joy at the thought that he would introduce 
his fiancee, that very evening, into the 
apartments she would so soon occupy. 

The servant had been dismissed for the 
evening, as Mme. Roland did not like to 
trust her alone, for fear fire might destroy 
all this gorgeousness during their ab- 
sence ; and she had taken upon herself 
the task of making the tea and serving 
guests. 

No one had yet entered the rooms ex- 
cept herself, Jean and the workmen, as 
she wished to astonish their friends by 
the beauty of the interior. She, there- 
fore, insisted that they should wait in the 
obscurity of the vestibule while Jean 
lighted the lamps and candles, that they 
might take in its magnificence at one 
glance. 

When the folding-doors were thrown 
open, the conservatory, lighted by a 
chandelier and numerous colored lights 
hidden amongst the palms and flowers, 
appeared at first sight like a fairy-land 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


245 


scene. There was a brief silence of 
astonishment, then Roland, astounded by 
so much luxury, exclaimed, “ Bravo ! ” 
clapping his hands as if before the 
apotheosis. 

They then passed on to the first salon, 
which was hung and furnished in old 
gold, and from there into the large con- 
sultation parlor, furnished very simply 
and elegantly in pale salmon pink. 

Seating himself in the large arm-chair 
before his desk, loaded with books, Jean, 
in a grave, somewhat forced voice, de- 
livered his first opinion. 

“Yes, Madame,” he began, “the laws 
are rigid and formal, and give me, with 
the apprpbation which I have announced 
to you, the absolute certainty that within 
three months the affair of which we 
spoke will have come to a happy solution.” 

He was looking at Mme. Rosemilly, 
who was smiling at Mme. Roland, and as 
he said the last words his mother took 


246 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


his fiancee s hands in hers and pressed 
them affectionately. 

Jean could no longer repress his delight, 
but capered around the room like a young 
collegian, then, stopping suddenly in the 
center of the room, exclaimed; Hem ! 
how well the voice carries in this room. 
It is an excellent place for an oration,” 
and proceeded to make a speech. 

“ If humanity alone, if that natural sen- 
timent of compassion which we feel for 
all sufferings was to be the motive of the 
acquittal that we solicit from you, we 
would appeal, gentlemen of the jury, to 
your pity, to your hearts as fathers and 
men; but we have 'right’ on our side, 
and it is simply a question of justice that 
we shall submit before you — ” 

Pierre looked around these apartments 
that might'have been his own, and each 
word from his brother added to his irrita- 
tion and resentment, thinking him much 
too stupid to be the possessor of so much 
luxury. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


247 


Mme. Roland now led the way to the 
other apartments, and, opening' a door at 
the right, said, “This is the bedroom.” 

She had brought all her motherly pride 
and love to her assistance in the adorn- 
ment of this room. The hangings were 
of Rouen cretonne, which was an imita- 
tion of old Norman tapestry. It was a 
Louis XV. design — a shepherdess in a 
medallion held up by the united beaks of 
two doves — and gave the. walls, the bed 
and chairs an air so coquettish and 
rustic that it was altogether very charm- 
ing. 

“Oh! how beautiful,” exclaimed Mme. 
Rosemilly, in delight. 

“Does it please you?” asked Jean. 

“ Oh! so much,” she said. 

“ If you only knew how pleased I am 
to hear you say so,” he replied, softly. 

They looked at each other for an in- 
stant, with a world of confident tender- 
ness in their eyes. 

She was, nevertheless, somewhat em- 


248 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


barrassed and confused in this room, 
which was to be her nuptial chamber. 
On entering she had remarked that the 
bed was very wide, a real family bed, 
chosen by Mme. Roland, who had, no 
doubt, foreseen and desired the speedy 
marriage of her son; and this precaution 
of the mother pleased her, seeming to 
say to her that she was expected in the 
family. 

They then re-entered the parlor, and 
Jean, opening the door to the left, led the 
way into the rotonde dining-room, which 
was profusely decorated by Chinese 
lanterns. Mother and son had piled up 
all that their fancy could suggest into 
this room. It was filled with — bamboo 
furniture, grotesque Chinese figures, 
silken banners spangled with gold, hung 
on transparent rods on which glass beads 
sparkled like drops of water, fans nailed 
to the walls to hold the draperies in 
place, sabers, masks, cranes made with 
feathers; and all those bric-a-brac of 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


249 


porcelain, wood, paper, ivory and 
bronze, had that pretentious and stiff 
aspect, that unaccustomed hands and un- 
trained eyes gave to things that exact 
the greatest tact, taste and artistic educa- 
tion. It was, however, the room that was 
most admired in the new home. Pierre, 
alone, took exception to the decorations, 
and made his remarks with an irony and bit- 
terness that wounded his brother deeply. 

The table was loaded with pyramids of 
fruits, and monuments of cakes. They 
were not at all hungry, however, and 
could only suck the fruit and nibble the 
cake, rather than eat of it. Soon after, 
Mme. Rosemilly pleaded fatigue and 
prepared to go. 

It was decided that old Roland should 
escort her home, while Mme. Roland, in 
the absence of the servant, would look 
around to see that nothing was wanting 
to the comfort of her son. 

“ Shall I return for you ? ” asked her 
husband. 


2 50 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


She hesitated, then answered : “ Never 
mind ; Pierre will take me home.” 

As soon as they were gone she blew 
out the candles, put away the cake, sugar 
and wines into the sideboard, and re- 
turned the key to Jean ; then she went 
into the bedroom to open the bed, see 
that the jug was filled with fresh water 
and the window properly closed. 

Pierre and Jean had remained in the 
small parlor, the latter still smarting un- 
der the severe criticism made on his taste, 
and the former more and more enraged to 
see his brother in possession of these 
apartments. 

They had been smoking some time in 
silence, when Pierre suddenly arose, ex- 
claiming: 

“ Cristi! how faded the widow looked 
to-night; excursions are not favorable to 
her looks.” 

Jean felt one of those sudden furies 
that overwhelms easy-going persons when 
wounded to the heart; his emotion was 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


251 


SO intense that he gasped for breath as he 
stammered : 

“ I forbid you to call Mme. Rosemilly 
‘the widow’ when you refer to her in 
future.” 

“ Upon my word, I believe you are 
giving me orders,” said Pierre, turning 
haughtily to 'him. “Perhaps you are 
losing your senses.” 

“I am not losing my senses,” said 
Jean, straightening up, “but I have had 
enough of your conduct toward me.” 

“Toward you?” laughed Pierre, scorn- 
fully. “ Do you make part of Mme. 
Rosemilly?” 

“ I want you to know that Mme. Rose- 
milly is to become my wife,” declared 
Jean, warmly. 

“Ha! ha! very good, indeed,” said 
Pierre, laughing outright. “ I now under- 
stand why I should no longer call her 
‘the widow.’ But you have taken a 
strange way to announce your mar- 
riage.” 


252 PIERRE ET JEAN- 

“I forbid you to ridicule her — do you 
hear me? — I forbid you,” said Jean, in a 
trembling voice. 

He had approached his brother, pale, 
trembling and exasperated by his irony 
aimed at the woman he loved and had 
chosen. 

But Pierre also became suddenly furi- 
ous. All the powerless hatred, the furi- 
ous jealousy, the repressed anger and 
the silent despair that had been gather- 
ing for some time within his heart, now 
burst forth and blinded him like a rush of 
blood to the head. 

“ You dare? — You dare?” — he hissed. 
“ And I order you to be silent, do you 
hear? — I order you.” 

Jean, surprised at this violence, was 
silent for a few seconds, searching in his 
troubled mind for the thing, the phrase, 
the word, that would cut his brother 
to the heart. 

“ I have long known that you are 
jealous of me, ” he rejoined slowly, trying 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


253 


to control his fury that his aim might be - 
surer, and his words wound more 
deeply, “ever since the day you began to 
say ‘the widow,’ because you under- 
stood that it annoyed me. ” 

Pierre burst into one of those scornful 
and malicious laughs that were peculiar to 
him. 

“ Ha! ha! Mon Dieu! Jealous of you! — 
Me, jealous, — and of what? — of what, 
Mon Dieu ! — of your face or your intelli- 
gence? — ” 

But Jean felt that he had touched the 
wound in his heart. 

“Yes,” he went on, “you are jealous 
of me; and you have been jealous ever 
since we were children; and you became 
furious when you saw that this woman 
preferred me, and would not accept your 
attentions. ” 

“ I — I — ” stuttered Pierre, exaspera- 
ted by this insinuation, “I am jealous of 
you? And on account of that little goose, 
that simpleton, that stupidity?—” 


254 


PTERRE ET JEAN 


Jean who knew that his words struck 
home, went on. 

" And the day when you tried to row 
against me in the Perle / And all you 
have said before her to impress her with 
your superiority ! Why, you are burst- 
ing with jealousy! And when that inher- 
itance came, you became furious, and 
have detested me ever since; you have 
shown it in your manners; you have made 
everybody suffer, and you are not an 
hour without spitting the bile that chokes 
you!” 

Pierre clinched his fists in fury and felt 
an almost irresistible impulse of throttling 
his brother. 

“Ah! ” he muttered, “stop, don’t speak 
of that fortune.” 

“ Why, jealousy is oozing from every 
pore of your skin!” cried Jean. “You 
cannot say one word to my mother, father 
or myself but it bursts forth. You affect 
to scorn me because you are jealous! 
You quarrel with everybody because of 


PIERRE ET JEAET 


255 


your jealousy. And now that I am rich 
you cannot contain yourself, you have 
become venomous; you torture our 
mother as if it were her fault” — 

Pierre had recoiled to the chimney- 
piece, his lips apart, his eyes dilated, the 
prey of one of those wild furies that lead 
to crime. 

“Be silent, be silent!” he panted in a 
low voice. 

“ I will not be silent! I have long 
wanted to tell you what I thought of you ; 
you have now given me the occasion, so 
much the worse for you. I love a woman. 
You know it, and you ridicule her in my 
presence. You have driven me to it, so 
much the worse for you. But I will tear 
out your viper’s fangs! I will force you 
to respect me.” 

“ To respect you? ” 

“ Yes, me! ” 

“To respect — you — who have dis- 
graced us all by your cupidity! ” 


256 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


“ What did you say? ” cried Jean in a 
frenzy. “ Repeat that — repeat it! ” 

“I say that one should not accept the 
fortune of one man while passing for the 
son of another.” 

Jean remained motionless, scarcely 
understanding, horrified by the insinua- 
tion conveyed in his brother’s words. 

“ What! you say — repeat that again! ” 

“ I merely repeat what the world thinks, 
what everybody is speaking of ; that you 
are the son of the man who left you his 
fortune. Well, a decent son does not 
accept the money that dishonors his 
mother.” 

“ Pierre — Pierre — Pierre — do you 
realize what you say? You — and it is 
you — who utters this infamy?” 

“Yes — it is I. Do you not see that 
I am dying of shame and sorrow for the 
last month, that I spend my nights with- 
out slumber, and my days in hiding like a 
wild beast, that I know not what I am 
saying or doing, nor what will become of 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


257 


me, so much do I suffer, so crazed am I 
with shame and grief, for my suspicion 
has now become a certainty!” 

“ Hush, Pierre! Mamma is in the next 
room! Remember that she may hear us 
— that she does hear us,” 

But he could no longer control himself, 
and felt that he must unburden his heart; 
and he told all, his suspicions, his argu- 
ments, his struggles, his conviction, and 
the history of the portrait that had dis- 
appeared once more. 

He spoke in short, broken and dis- 
jointed phrases; like the ravings of a 
madman. 

He seemed to have forgotten that 
Jean, and perhaps his mother, were lis- 
tening. He spoke as if no one heard 
him, because he must speak, because he 
must give vent to his suffering; the wound 
in his heart had been too long com- 
pressed and closed. It had now swelled 
like a tumor, and this tumor had burst, 
bespattering everybody. He began to 

Pierre et Jean 17 


258 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


walk up and down, as he nearly always 
did, and with his eyes fixed before him, 
gesticulating in a frenzy of despair, 
choked by sobs and spasms of anger 
against himself; he spoke as if he were 
confessing his misery and the misery of 
his family, as if he would have cast his 
sufferings to the deaf and invisible air 
that carried away his words. 

Jean distracted and almost suddenly 
convinced by the blind energy of his 
brother, was leaning against the door, 
behind which he feared their mother had 
heard them. 

She could not leave the room without 
passing through the parlor. She had 
not returned, because she had not dared. 

“There, what a brute I am to have 
talked like this! ” cried Pierre, with a 
sudden stamp of his foot. And he 
rushed, bare-headed, down the stairs. 

The noise of the street door, as it 
closed with a bang, awakened Jean from 
the profound stupor into which he had 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


259 


sunk. A few seconds passed, seconds 
that were longer than hours; and still his 
soul remained benumbed in an idiotic 
coma. He realized that he must think 
and act without delay; but he hesitated, 
not wishing to understand, to know, to 
remember; through fear, weakness and 
cowardice. He belonged to that race of 
temporizers who always put off every- 
thing till the morrow; and, now that he 
must take an immediate resolution, he 
instinctively sought to gain a few moments 
of delay. 

But the deep silence that sur- 
rounded him after the loud vociferations 
of Pierre, the sudden silence of the walls 
and furniture, with the bright lights of the 
six candles and two lam^ struck him 
with such terror that he was seized with a 
desire of running away also. 

He then tried to concentrate his 
thoughts, to shake off his torpor and 
reflect. 

He had never encountered a difficulty 


26 o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


in his life. He was one of those men who 
allow themselves to drift along like the 
water that flows. He had been a careful 
scholar to avoid punishment, and had com- 
pleted his legal studies with regularity 
because his existence was so unruffled 
and calm. All things in the world seemed 
only natural to him, and never attracted 
his attention or awakened his curiosity. 
He loved order and tranquillity through 
temperament, having no depth of mind’ or 
soul; and he remained, before this catas- 
trophe, like a man who falls into the water 
and does not know how to swim. 

He at first tried to doubt. His brother 
had lied through hatred and jealousy. 

And yet, how could he have been despica- 
ble enough to say such a thing of his mother 
if he were not himself torn by despair? 
And then, there still vibrated in his ears, 
before his eyes, through his nerves, even 
in his flesh, certain words, certain cries 
of sufferings, some intonations and gest- 
ures of Pierre’s, so painful as to be irre- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


261 


sistible and as irrefutable as certitude 
itself. 

He was too crushed to make a move- 
ment or come to a decision. His anguish 
was intolerable; and he felt that his 
mother had heard all and was waiting 
for him behind that closed door. 

What was she doing? Not a move- 
ment, not a sound, not a breath, not a 
sigh, revealed the presence of a human 
being behind those boards. Had she 
escaped? But how ? If she had escaped 
— she must have jumped from the win- 
dow into the street below! 

This sudden thought made him start 
with terror; he burst rather than opened 
the door, and rushed into the room. 

It seemed deserted. A single candle 
burned on the dressing-case. 

He ran to the window; it was closed 
and the curtains drawn down. He turned, 
and searched the dark corners with anx- 
ious eyes; then, seeing that the curtains 
were drawn open from the bed, he pre- 


262 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


cipitated himself toward it. His mother 
was there, lying at full length on the bed, 
het face buried among the pillows, which 
she clutched with both hands and held 
over her ears, that she might hear no 
more. 

He at first thought she must be smoth- 
ered. Then, seizing her by the shoul- 
ders, he turned her over, but she still held 
the pillow against her face, to choke her 
cries. 

But the contact of the rigid body, and 
of the contracted arms communicated to 
him the shock of her indescribable torture. 
The energy and strength with which she 
held the feather-pillow over mouth, eyes, 
and ears, that he might neither see nor 
speak to her, made him understand by 
the shock he received, to what degree 
one may suffer. And his heart, that 
simple heart, was torn with pity. He 
was not a judge, — not even a merciful 
judge ; — he was a man full of weaknesses, 
and a son full of affection. He remem- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


263 


bered nothing’ that his brother had said, 
he neither reasoned nor argued, he 
simply touched the inert body of hi# 
mother and finding himself uhable to 
tear the pillow from her face, he cried 
as he kissed her dress : 

“ Mamma, mamma, my poor mamma, 
look at me! ” 

He might have thought her dead had 
it not been for a shiver that ran through 
her almost insensible body, like the 
vibrations of a stretched cord. 

“ Mamma, mamma, ” he repeated, list- 
en to me. It is not true, I know it is not 
true. ” 

She had a violent spasm, followed by 
smothered sobs in the pillow. Then all 
her nerves relaxed, the rigid muscles 
slackened, the fingers loosened their 
hold on the pillow and he raised it from 
her face. 

She was deathly pale and the tears 
flowed between her closed eyelids. 
Throwing his arms around her neck he 


264 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


kissed her eyes slowly, with long kisses 
of sympathy wetted by his tears and re- 
peated : 

“ Mamma, my dear mamma, I know it 
is not true. Do not weep, I know it ! It 
is not true.” 

She arose and looked at him ; and with 
one of those courageous efforts that are 
required in certain cases to kill one’s self, 
she said to him : 

“No, it is true, my child.” 

And they remained face to face without 
speaking. For a few instants her sobs 
again suffocated her, then by an effort she 
conquered her emotion, and went on. 

“ It is true, my child. Why should I 
try to deceive you? It is true. You 
would not believe me, if I did lie.” 

She looked wild and distracted. Seized 
with terror, he threw himself on his knees 
by the bedside, murmuring, 

“Hush, mamma, hush.” 

She had risen, and with frightful energy 
and resolution, cried out : 


PIERRR ET JEAJV 


265 


“But — I have nothing more to say to 
you — my child ; farewell !” 

And she walked toward the door, but 
he seized her in his arms, crying: 

“What are you doing, mamma? 
Where are you going?” 

“ I do not know — how should I know ” — 
she gasped, “I have nothing more to do 
since I am alone in the world.” 

She struggled to escape, but he re- 
tained her in his powerful clasp, finding 
only that one word which he repeated 
over and over. 

“ Mamma — mamma — mamma.” 

“No, no,” said she, trying to break 
away from him. “ I am your mother no 
longer. I am nothing to you nor to any 
one else, nothing, nothing! You have 
no longer a father and mother, my poor 
child — Farewell ! 

He suddenly understood that if he let 
her go, she would never return, and rais- 
ing her in his arms he carried her to an 
easy-chair, and forced her into it, then 


266 


PIERRE El' JEAN 


kneeling before her and forming a chain 
around her with his arms, he went on: 

“You will not go from here, mamma. 
I love you and I shall keep you. I shall 
keep you always: you are mine.” 

“ No, no, my poor boy,” she murmured 
in an almost inaudible voice, “it is impos- 
sible. You weep with me now; to-mor- 
row you would cast me away. You could 
not forgive me, either.” 

“What me? How little you know 
me,” he replied with such an impulse of 
sincere love that she gave a cry of joy, 
took his head by the hair with both hands, 
pulled him violently to her and kissed 
him distractedly. 

She placed her cheek against his own, 
feeling the warmth of his skin through 
his thick beard and remained motionless, 
whispering into his ear: 

“No, no, my little Jean. You would 
not forgive me, to-morrow. You think 
so, but you are deceiving yourself. You 
forgave me to-night; and that pardon has 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


267 


saved my life; but you must never see me 
again.” 

"Mamma, do not say that!” he re- 
peated, clasping her in his arms once 
more. 

“ Yes, my little one, I must go. I 
know not where nor when, neither do I 
know what I shall say, but I must go. 
I would not dare look at you or embrace 
you any more, don’t you understand?” 

" My darling little mother,” he whis- 
pered into her ear in his turn, " you will 
remain because I wish it, because I have 
need of you. And y.ou must swear to 
obey me at once.” 

" No, my child, it cannot be.” 

" Oh! mamma, it must be, do you hear? 
It must be.” 

" No, my child, it is impossible. It 
would be condemning us all to the tort- 
ures of hell. I have known for the past 
month what this anguish is. You are 
moved now, but when that has passed, 
when you look upon me as Pierre does. 


268 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


when you remember what I have said! — 
Oh! — my little Jean, think — think, that I 
am your mother! ” — 

“ You must not leave me, mamma, I 
have but you.” 

“ But consider my son that we can 
never look at each other without blush- 
ing, that whenever our eyes meet, mine 
will shrink from your gaze, and I shall 
feel ready to die of shame.” 

“ That is not true, mamma.” 

“ Yes, yes, yes, it is true! Oh! I well 
understood all your poor brother’s strug- 
gles, all, even from the first day. And 
now, when I hear his footstep in the 
house, my heart beats as if it would burst 
my breast; when I hear his voice I feel 
ready to faint. I still had you! Now, I 
have you no longer. Oh! my little Jean, 
do you believe that I could live between 
you two.” 

” Yes, mamma, I will love you so much 
that you will think of it no longer.” 

“Oh! oh! as if that were possible.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


269 


“ Yes, it is possible.” 

“ How can I avoid thinking of it, when 
I see your brother and yourself every 
day. Will you both forget it?” 

“ I swear it! ” 

“ But you will think of it every hour of 
the day.” 

"No, I swear it. And further; if you 
leave me I will enlist and get killed.” 

This puerile threat upset her com- 
pletely; she strained Jean to her heart 
and caressed him with passionate tender- 
ness, while he continued: “ I love you 
more than you think, a great deal more, 
a great deal more; come, be reasonable. 
Try to remain for one week only. Will 
you promise me a week! You cannot 
refuse me that? ” 

‘‘My child” — said she, placing her 
two hands on his shoulders and holding 
him at arm’s length. ‘‘ Let us try to be 
calm and control our emotions. Let me 
speak first. If I were to hear, once only, 
from your lips, what I have heard every 


270 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


day for a month from the lips of your 
brother; if I were to see, once only, in 
your eyes, what I have so often read in 
his; if I were to guess by a single word, 
or a single look, that I had become as 
odious to you as I have to him — one hour 
after, you understand, one hour after — I 
shall be gone forever.” 

“ Mamma, I swear it” — he interposed. 

“ Let me speak — For a month I have 
suffered all that a woman can suffer. 
From the moment I understood that 
your brother, that my other son, sus- 
pected me and was 'guessing the truth, 
minute by minute, every instant -of my 
life became a martyrdom that it is im- 
possible to express.” 

Her voice was so full of anguish, that 
the contagion of her torture, filled Jean’s 
eyes with tears. He attempted to em- 
brace her, but she repulsed him, saying: 

“ Leave me alone — listen — I have still 
many things to tell you, that you may 
understand — but you do not under- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


271 


Stand — it is that — if I should remain — 
it would be necessary — No, I cannot! ” — 

“Speak, mamma, speak!” 

“ Well, yes. At least I will not have 
deceived you. You wish me to remain 
with you, do you not? Well, to do that, 
that we may still see, meet and speak to 
each other every day in the house — for I 
no longer dare open a door through fear 
of finding your brother behind it — it is 
necessary, not that you pardon me — noth- 
ing hurts more than a pardon — but that 
you should bear me no ill-will for what I 
have done. Y ou must feel strong enough, 
different enough from all the world, to say 
to yourself that you are not Roland’s son, 
without blushing and without scorning 
me. I have already suffered enough. I 
have already suffered too much; I can 
bear no more; no, I can bear no more! 
And my suffering does not date from yes- 
terday, but from long ago. But you can 
never understand it! That we may still 
be able to live together and embrace each 


272 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Other, my little Jean, you must say to 
yourself, that if I was your father’s mis- 
tress, I was still more his wife, his true 
wife; that I have no shame in my heart; 
that I regret nothing; that I still love him, 
though he is dead; that I shall always 
love him; that I have loved but him; that 
he was all my life, all my joy, all my hope, 
all my consolation, all! all! all to me! for 
many years! Listen, my little one, before 
God who hears me, I would have had no 
pleasure in existence if I had not met 
him — nothing, no love, no affection, not 
one of those hours that make us regret 
that we grow old, nothing! I owe him 
everything! I have loved no one in 
the world but him, your brother and 
yourself. Without you it would be a 
void, dark and empty as the night. 
I should never have loved anything, 
known anything, desired anything. I 
should not even have wept, for I have 
wept, my little Jean. Oh! yes, I have 
wept since we came here. I had given 


273 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


myself entirely to him, body and soul, for- 
ever, with happiness, and for more than 
ten years I was his wife, as he was my 
husband before God, who made us for 
each other. And then, I understood that 
he loved me less. He was still kind and 
attentive, but I was no longer what I had 
been to him. It was all over! Oh! how 
I wept! — How miserable and deceitful is 
life! — Nothing is lasting. — And then we 
came here; and I never saw him again, 
he never came. — He promised in all his 
letters! — I always expected him! — but I 
never saw him again! — and now he is 
dead! — He still loved us, however, since 
he thought of you. I shall love him until 
my dying hour, and I shall never deny 
him; I love you, because you are his child, 
and I could not be ashamed of him before 
you! Do you understand? I could not! 
If you wish me to remain, you must accept 
being his son, and we must speak of him 
sometimes. You must love him a little, 
and we must think of him when we look 

Pierre et lean i8 


274 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


at each other. If you will not, if you can- 
not, then farewell, my little one; it is im- 
possible that we should remain together 
now! I will do as you decide.” 

“ Remain, mamma,” replied Jean, 
softly. 

She strained him to her heart, and 
wept again; then, laying her cheek against 
his, she resumed: 

“ Yes, but Pierre? What shall become 
of us, with him? ” 

“We shall find some way,” murmured 
Jean. “You can no longer live near 
him. ” 

At the thought of her elder son, her 
anguish returned. 

“No, no, I cannot. No! no! ” she ex- 
claimed. And, throwing herself in Jean’s 
arms, she cried out, in the distress of her 
soul: 

“ Save me from him, my little one; save 
me. Do something — I know not what. 
Search — save me ! ” 

“Yes, mamma, I shall search.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


275 


“At once — you must — at once. Do 
not leave me! I am so afraid of him — 
so afraid!” 

“ Yes, I will find some means, I promise.” 

“Oh! but quick, quick! You do not 
understand what passes within me when 
I see him.” 

Then she whispered in his ear; “ Keep 
me here, with you.” 

He hesitated, reflected, and understood, 
with his positive good sense, the danger 
of this arrangement. But it required long 
reasoning and many precise arguments to 
overcome her fright and terror. 

“ Only for to-night,” she pleaded, “ only 
for to-night. You could send word to 
Roland to-morrow morning, and say I 
was taken suddenly ill.” 

“That is impossible, since Pierre is 
gone. Come, have more courage. I will 
arrange everything to-morrow, I promise. 
I shall be at the house at nine o’clock. 
Come, put on your hat. I will take you 
home,” 


276 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ I will do as you wish/’ she said, with 
the timid and grateful confidence of a 
child. 

She tried to arise; but the paroxysm 
had been too severe, she could not sup- 
port herself. 

He made her drink a glass of water, 
and bathed her temples in vinegar. She 
was as weak and pale as if just arisen 
from a sick bed. 

At length she was able to walk, and 
took Jean’s arm. Three o’clock was 
striking as they passed out into the night. 

When they reached her door, he kissed 
her affectionately, saying: “ Good night, 
mamma, courage!” 

She entered and, with cautious foot- 
steps, ascended the silent stairway; enter- 
ing her room, she undressed quickly, and 
with the refound emotions of her former 
adulteries, she crept into the bed beside 
the snoring Roland. 

Pierre was the only one awake in the 
house to hear her return. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

When he reentered his apartments, 
Jean threw himself on a divan; the griefs 
and anxieties that made his brother run 
and hide like a hunted animal, had an 
entirely different effect on his somnolent 
nature and completely paralyzed him. 
He felt powerless to make a movement, 
unable even to reach his bed; helpless 
in body and mind, crushed and over- 
whelmed. He was not struck, as Pierre 
had been, in the purity of his filial love, 
in that secret dignity which is the envel- 
ope of proud hearts, but he was over- 
whelmed by a stroke of fate that men- 
aced his dearest interests. 

When at length his heart was calmed 
and his thoughts had cleared like 
troubled waters after a storm, he faced 
the situation that had just been revealed 
to him. Had he learned the secret of 


277 


278 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


his birth in any other manner, he would 
have been filled with indignation and 
profound grief; but after his quarrel with 
his brother, after that violent and brutal 
accusation had shattered his nerves, the 
poignant emotion caused by his mother’s 
confession left him without the energy to 
revolt. The shock his sensibilities had 
received had been strong enough to 
sweep away, in a moment of irresistible 
emotion, all the prejudices and all the 
sacred susceptibilities of his moral nature. 
Moreover, he was not a man capable 
of resistance. He did not like to 
struggle against others, and still less 
against himself ; he therefore resigned 
himself, and by an instinctive inclina- 
tion, an innate love of quiet, of peace 
and tranquillity, he now began to be dis- 
turbed at the prospect of the annoyances 
that would surge around him and over- 
whelm him at once. He saw they were 
inevitable, and to overcome them he 
resolved on superhuman efforts of energy 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


279 


and activity. This difficulty must be met 
at once, to-morrow, for he felt that im- 
perious need of an immediate solution, 
which constitutes all the force of the 
weak, who are incapable of a protracted 
determination. His lawyer’s mind, habit- 
uated in disentangling and studying com- 
plicated situations and questions of 
domestic order in troubled households, 
immediately discovered all the near con- 
sequences of the present state of his 
brother’s mind. In spite of himself, he 
faced the results from an almost profes- 
sional point of view, as if he were arrang- 
ing the future relations of clients after a 
moral catastrophe. A continual contact 
with Pierre was certainly impossible now. 
He could easily avoid it by remaining at 
home, but it was out of the question for 
their mother to remain under the same 
roof with her eldest son. 

He remained motionless on the cush- 
ions for a long time, meditating, imagin- 


28 o 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


ing and reflecting combinations, without 
finding anything satisfactory. 

But an idea suddenly assailed him: — 
Would an honest man retain the fortune 
he had received ? 

His first impulse was to give it to the 
poor. It would be hard, certainly, but it 
could not be helped. He would sell his 
furniture and work like others, as all be- 
ginners have to work. This virile and 
painful resolution roused his courage. 
He arose and leaned his forehead against 
the window. He had been poor; he 
would return to poverty. After all, he 
would not die of it. His eyes were fixed 
on the gas-jet that burned on the oppo- 
site side of the street. Then, as a be- 
lated woman hurried past, he suddenly 
remembered Madame Rosdmilly, and his 
heart was thrilled by a shock of profound 
emotion born of a cruel thought. All the 
desperate consequences of his resolution 
appeared to him at once. He must re- 
nounce this woman, renounce happiness, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


281 


renounce everything. Could he act thus 
now that he was engaged to her? She 
had accepted him, knowing him to be 
rich. She would still accept him if he 
were poor; but had he the right to de- 
mand, to impose this sacrifice upon her? 
Would it not be better to keep this 
money as a trust, which he could restore 
to the poor at some future time? 

And in his soul, where egotism as- 
sumed the mask of honesty, all these 
disguised interests struggled and con- 
tended with each other. His first scruples 
yielded to ingenious reasonings, then re- 
appeared, then again vanished. 

He returned to his seat, searching a 
decisive motive, an all-powerful pretext, 
to settle his hesitations and convince his 
natural uprightness. He had already 
said to himself a score of times: Since 
I am the son of this man, since I know 
it and accept it, is it not natural that I 
should also accept his fortune?” But 


282 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


this argument could not silence the “No” 
murmured in his conscience. 

Suddenly he thought: “Since I am 
not the son of the man whom I believed 
my father, I can accept nothing from him, 
neither during his lifetime nor after his 
death. It would be neither right nor 
just. It would be robbing my brother.” 

This new manner of looking at it, re- 
lieved him, appeased his conscience, and 
he returned to the window. 

“Yes,” he was saying to himself, “I 
must renounce all claim to the family in- 
heritance, and leave it entirely to Pierre, 
since I am not his father’s child. That 
is only just. Then is it not just, also, 
that I should retain the money received 
from my own father?” 

Having concluded that he could not 
claim any of Roland’s fortune, and decided 
to give it up entirely, he then consented 
and resigned himself to keeping Mare- 
chal’s inheritance, for if he refused both he 
would find himself reduced to mendicity. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


283 


This delicate point once settled, he re- 
turned to the question of Pierre’s presence 
in the family. How could they dispose 
of him? He was despairing of finding a 
practical solution when the whistle of a 
steamer entering the port, seemed to 
reply to him by suggesting an idea. 

Then, without undressing, he threw 
himself on his bed and dozed until daylight. 

About nine o’clock, he went out to 
assure himself if the execution of his 
project was possible. Then, after a few 
attempts and visits, he proceeded to the 
home of his parents. His mother was 
awaiting him in her own room. 

“ If you had not come,” she said, “I 
should never have dared to go down. ” 

Just then Roland called from the foot 
of the stairs. 

“ Ain’t we going to have anything to 
eat to-day, confound it!” 

Receiving no reply, he roared out: 

“Josephine, you hussy! what are you 
doing?” 


284 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Here I be master,” came the voice 
of the servant, from the depth below 
stairs, “what d’ye want?” 

“ Where is your mistress?” 

“ Madame is up stairs with Mister Jean!” 

Then raising his head to the second 
story, the old man roared: “ Louise!” 

“ What'is it?” said Mme, Roland open- 
ing her door. 

“Aren’t we going to have anything to 
eat, confound it!” 

“Yes, my dear, we are going.” 

And she went down, followed by Jean. 

“What, you!” exclaimed Roland on 
seeing the young man, “are you tired of 
your own home already? ” 

“No, father, but I wished to speak 
with mother this morning.” 

Jean came forward with extended hand, 
and as he felt the paternal grasp of the 
old man, an odd and unexpected emotion 
thrilled his heart, the emotion of separa- 
tions and farewells without hope of re- 
turn. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


285 


“Has not Pierre come down?^’ asked 
Mme. Roland. “ No, but so much the 
worse for him,” replied old Roland, 
shrugging his shoulders. “ He is always 
late; let’s begin without him.” 

‘ You had better go and look for^him, 
Jean,” said his mother turning to him, 
“ he will feel hurt if we do not wait for 
him.” 

“The young man went out of the 
room and ascended the stairs with the 
feverish resolution of a timid person 
about to fight. He knocked at the door 
and Pierre called out: 

“ Come in! ” 

“ He entered and found his brother 
busily writing at his desk. 

“ Good morning! ” said Jean, 

“ Good morning! ” said Pierre, rising. 

And the brothers shook hands as if 
nothing had happened. 

“Are you not coming down to break- 
fast? ” asked Jean. 

“ Why — you see — I have a great deal 


286 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


to do.” His voice trembled and his 
anxious eye interrogated his brother, as 
to what he should do. 

“We are waiting for you,” Jean replied. 

“Ah! is she — is mother down stairs? ” 

“ Yes, it was she who sent me in search 
of you.” 

“Ah! then I shall go down.” 

At the dining-room door he hesitated 
to go in first; then by a quick movement 
he opened the door, and saw his father 
and mother seated at the table facing each 
other. 

He went up to her without raising his 
eyes, and, without a word, he bent over 
her and offered her his forehead to kiss 
as he had done for some time past, 
instead of kissing her on the cheeks as of 
yore. He guessed that she approached 
her mouth, but did not feel her lips on 
his skin, and he straightened up with a 
beating heart, after this pretended caress. 

“ What passed between them after 
my departure?” he asked himself. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


287 


Jean repeatedly called her “mamma” 
and “dear mother,” in affectionate tones, 
waiting on her attentively and pouring 
her wine for her. Pierre then understood 
that they had wept together, but he could 
not penetrate their thoughts. “ Did Jean 
believe his mother guilty or his brother 
a wretch?” 

And all the reproaches he had heaped 
upon himself for the horrible things he 
had uttered assailed him anew, choking 
him and closing his lips, preventing him 
from eating and speaking. 

He now felt an intolerable desire to 
fly, to leave this house that was no longer 
his, and these people who were attached 
to him by imperceptible links only. He 
would have wished to go at once, no 
matter where, feeling that all was over, 
that he could no longer remain near them, 
that he was continually torturing them, 
in spite of himself, merely by his presence, 
and that they would make him suffer a 
continual unbearable anguish. 


288 


PIERRE ET JE AN 


Jean talked and chatted with Roland. 
Pierre neither listened nor heard. He 
thought he detected, however, a meaning 
in his brother’s voice and he now tried to 
catch the drift of his words. Jean was 
saying; 

“They say, she will be the finest ship 
afloat, a capacity of six thousand five 
hundred tons. She will sail on her first 
trip next month.” 

“ So soon! ” cried Roland, astonished, 
“ I never thought she would be ready to 
go to sea this summer.” 

“You are mistaken,” said Jean, “the 
work has been pushed on with such 
vigor that she will certainly cross before 
autumn. I passed by the company’s 
office this morning and spoke to one of 
the managers.” 

“ Ah! ah! which one? ” inquired the old 
man. • ' 

“ M. Marchand, the particular friend 
of the president of the board of directors.” 









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PIERRE ET JEAN 


289 


“ Why, do you know him? ” asked the 
old man, in surprise. 

“Yes, and I had a small favor to ask 
him.” 

“Ah! then you can take me through 
the Lorraine as soon as she comes in 
port, can’t you? ” 

“ Certainly, I will,” assented Jean. 

Jean appeared hesitating, searching 
phrases, pursuing an undiscoverable tran- 
sition. Finally, he said: 

“ In fact, life on one of those great 
transatlantic steamers is very agreeable. 
More than half of each month is spent in 
two superb cities. New York and Havre, 
and the remainder among charming 
people on the sea. One may make 
agreeable acquaintances among the pas- 
sengers, and some of them may be useful, 
yes, very useful, later on. Just fancy; 
the captain, by economizing on the coal, 
can make twenty-five thousand francs a 
year, if not more.” 

“ Phew! ” exclaimed Roland, with a 

Pierre et Jean 19 


290 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


long whistle, that bore witness to his pro- 
found respect for both the sum and the 
captain. 

“The purser,” rejoined Jean, “may 
reach ten thousand, and the surgeon has 
a fixed salary of five thousand, with lodg- 
ings, board, lights, heat, service, etc., etc. 
Which is equivalent to ten thousand, at 
least; that is a handsome sum.” 

Pierre, Avho had raised his eyes, en- 
countered those of his brother, and under- 
stood him. Then, after a little hesita- 
tion, he asked: 

“Is it very difficult to obtain the place 
as surgeon on one of those ships? ” 

“Yes and no,” Jean replied. “It all 
depends on circumstances and the influ- 
ence you possess.” 

This was followed by a long silence, 
then the doctor rejoined: 

“ And the Lorraine ‘s.zAs next month?” 

“Yes, the yth,” replied Jfean. 

There was a silence during which 
Pierre reflected. Indeed it would be an 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


291 


easy solution to the difficulty if he could 
go as surgeon on this ship. Later on, 
he might leave it perhaps, but in the 
meantime he would earn his living with- 
out asking anything from his family. 
He had sold his watch two days previous, 
for he could not now ask his mother for 
money. He was therefore without other 
resources; he had no means of obtaining 
other bread than that of this uninhabit- 
able house, of sleeping in another bed, 
orunder another roof. After a little hesi- 
tation, he said: 

" If I could, I would willingly sail with 
her.” 

“Why do you not?” asked Jean. 

“ Because I know no one belonging to 
the steamship company,” Pierre replied. 

“And what about all your fine pro- 
jects of success? ” cried old Roland in 
stupefaction, “what will become of 
them?” 

“There are times when one must sac- 
rifice and renounce the brightest hopes. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


292 

Besides, it is only a beginning, a means of 
amassing a few thousand francs to start 
me in life.” 

“That is very true,” said his father, 
immediately convinced. “ In a couple of 
years you can save six or seven thousand 
francs, and that will be a good start. 
What do you think of it, Louise ?” 

“ I think Pierre is right,” she replied, 
almost inaudibly. 

“And I will speak to M. Poulin, whom 
I know very well!” cried old Roland en- 
thusiastically. “ He is judge of the Tri- 
bunal of Commerce, and has charge of 
the company’s affairs. I can also see 
M. Lenient, the ship owner, who is an 
intimate friend of one of the vice-presi- 
dents.” 

“ Do you wish me to sound M. Mar- 
chand at once?” asked Jean. 

“Yes, I do,” replied Pierre; then after 
a moment’s thought he added: 

“The best way would probably be, to 
write to my teachers at the medical school, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


293 


who think very highly of me. I know 
that some of those ship surgeons are not 
very skillful. Flattering letters from such 
authorities as Professors Mas-Roussel, 
Remusot, Flache and Borriquel would do 
more in an hour than all these doubtful 
recommendations. All that is necessary 
is that your friend, M. Marchand, should 
present those letters to the board of 
directors.” 

“Your idea is excellent!” said Jean 
approvingly, and he smiled, reassured, 
almost content and sure of success, inca- 
pable of feeling disturbed for any length of 
time. 

“You will write those letters to-day?” 

“Yes, I shall do so at once. I will not 
take any coffee this morning, I am too 
nervous,” he said, as he arose and went 
out. 

“And you, mamma, what will you do? ” 
asked Jean, turning to his mother. 

“Nothing — I do not know,” she re- 
plied hesitatingly. 


294 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Will you come and call on Mme. 
Rosemilly with me? ” 

“Why yes — certainly,” 

“ Y ou know — it is indispensable that I 
should go to-day,” he said. 

“Yes — yes — that is true,” she said. 

“Why is it indispensable?” asked old 
Roland, who never did understand what 
was said before him. 

“ Because I have promised her to go.” 

“Ah! very well. That is different, 
then.” 

And he proceeded to fill his pipe, while 
mother and son went up-stairs to put on 
their hats. 

“Will you take my arm, mamma?” 
asked Jean, when they reached the street. 

Although this was an unusual offer on 
his part, she accepted and leaned on him. 
They then went on in silence for awhile, 
then Jean said: 

“You see that Pierre is perfectly will- 
ing to go.” 

“ Poor boy!” she murmured. 


PIERRE ET JEAN- 


295 


“Why do you say ‘poor boy?’ He 
will be quite happy on the Lorraine.” 

“ I know it, but I am thinking of many 
things.” 

She walked on by his side in silence, 
for a long time lost in thought, then, sud- 
denly raising her head, she said, in that 
odd tone we sometimes assume to con- 
clude a long and secret reflection; 

“ What a cruel thing life is. If we ever 
find a little happiness in it, we are guilty 
in abandoning ourselves to it, and we 
pay for it dearly later on.” 

“ Do not speak of it any more, mamma,” 
he whispered. 

“ How is it possible? I think of it al- 
ways.” 

“ You will forget it.” 

She was again silent, then, in a tone of 
profound regret, exclaimed: 

“Ah! how happy I might have been, if 
I had married another man! ” 

At present she was exasperated against 
Roland. She threw the whole responsi- 


296 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


bility of her fault and of her unhappiness, 
on his homeliness, his stupidity, his awk- 
wardness, the dullness of his intellect, and 
on his common-place appearance. It was 
owing to all this, to the vulgarity of this 
man, that she had deceived him, that she 
had driven one of her sons to despair, 
and that she had been forced to make to 
the other the most painful confession that 
can bleed the heart of a mother. 

“How dreadful for a young girl to 
marry a husband like mine,” she mur- 
mured. 

Jean did not reply. He was thinking 
of the man whom until now he had be- 
lieved to be his father, and perhaps the 
confused notion he had for a long time 
had of the paternal mediocrity, the con- 
stant irony of his brother, the disdainful 
indifference of others, and even the con- 
tempt of the servant for Roland had pre- 
pared his heart for his mother’s terrible 
avowal. Thus it was less painful to be 
the son of another ; and after the great 


PIERRE ET JEaM 


297 


shock of emotion of the night before, if 
he did not feel the revolt, the indigna- 
tion, and the anger which Mme. Roland 
had feared, it was because he had long 
suffered unconsciously from being the 
son of this stupid dolt. 

They had now reached Mme. Rose- 
milly’s house. She occupied the second 
floor of a large house that she owned on 
the road to Sainte-Adresse. Her windows 
overlooked the whole harbor of Havre. 

When she perceived Madame Roland, 
who was first to enter, instead of extend- 
ing her hand as usual, she opened her 
arms and kissed her affectionately, for she 
guessed the intention of this visit. 

The furniture of the parlor, which was 
of brocaded velvet, was always carefully 
covered. On the walls, hung with flow- 
ered paper, were four engravings bought 
by her first husband, the Captain. They 
represented maritime and sentimental 
scenes. The first was a fisherman’s wife 
waving her handkerchief from the cliff, 


298 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


\ 


while the sail that bore her husband 
away was disappearing in the horizon. 

The second represented the same 
woman kneeling on the same cliff, her 
arms raised to the sky full of lightning, 
and looking out on a sea of impossible 
waves in which her husband’s bark was 
about to founder. 

The other two engravings represented 
analogous scenes of a superior class of 
society. 

A young, fair woman dreaming with 
her elbow on the rail of a large steamship 
that was sailing away. She was looking 
at the already distant shore with eyes 
that were wet with tears and regret. 

Whom has she left behind her? 

Then, the same young woman seated 
in an arm-chair near a window over- 
looking the sea, had fainted away. A 
letter had fallen from her lap to the 
carpet. 

He is then dead, what despair! 

The visitors were generally moved and 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


299 


charmed by the common -place melan- 
choly of these transparent and poetic 
subjects. They understood them at once, 
without explanation and without search; 
and they pitied the poor woman, although 
they did not quite know or understand 
the nature of the grief of the most dis- 
tinguished, But even this doubt added 
to their interest. She must have lost 
her fiance! On entering this room, the 
eye was invariably attracted by these 
four subjects, and retained as if fascinated. 
It wandered away only to return again 
and again to contemplate the four expres 
sions of these two women who resembled 
each other like two sisters. The clear, 
well-finished outline, with its air of dis- 
tinction of a fashionable engraving, as 
well as its highly polished frame, gave an 
impression of neatness and order that 
was still more accentuated by the rest of 
the furniture. 

The' chairs were always ranged in an 
invariable order, some against the walls. 


300 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Others around the parlor table. The im- 
maculate curtains had folds that were so 
straight and regular, that they inspired 
one with the desire of crumpling them; 
and never was a grain of dust seen to 
tarnish the glided clock of the empire 
style, or the globe of the world supported 
by Atlas kneeling — seeming to be ripening 
like a hot-house melon. 

On seating themselves, the two ladies 
disarranged the chairs somewhat out of 
their normal positions. 

“ Have you not been out to-day? ’’asked 
Mme. Roland. 

“No, I must admit that I am some- 
what tired, ” replied Mme. Rosemilly, and 
then, as if to thank Jean and his mother, 
she went on to recall all the pleasure of 
the fishing excursion. 

“ Do you know, ” she added, “that this 
morning I ate my prawns, and they were 
delicious. If you wish, some day or 
other, we shall recommence this ” — 

“ Before we undertake a second excur- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


301 


sion,” interrupted the young man, “sup- 
pose we terminate the first.” 

“ Why, how? ’’asked the young woman, 
“I thought that one was all over.” 

“Oh! Madam, I also a captured a fish 
on the rocks of Saint Jouin that I wish to 
take home with me. ” 

“You? What was it?” she said, 
archly. “What did you catch there ? ” 

“A wife! And mamma and I have 
come this morning to ask you if she has 
changed her mind.” 

“No, monsieur, I never change my 
mind,” she said, smiling. 

He then extended his hand, and she 
placed hers within it with a quick and 
resolute gesture. 

“ It will be as soon as possible, will it 
not ? ” he asked. 

“Whenever you wish,” she replied, 
simply. 

“ In six weeks ? ” 

“I have no opinion. What does my 
future mother-in-law think?” 


302 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“Oh! I have nothing to say/’ she re- 
plied, with a melancholy smile. “ I have 
only to thank you for accepting Jean, as 
I know you will make him very happy.” 

“ We shall do what we can, mamma.” 

A little moved for the first time, Mme. 
Rosemilly arose, and, throwing her arms 
around Mme. Roland, embraced her like 
a child; and, under this new caress, a 
strong. emotion swelled the bruised heart 
of the poor woman. She could not have 
expressed what she felt. It was sad and 
sweet at the same time. She had lost a 
son and found a daughter. 

When they were again seated, face to 
face, they took each other’s hands, look- 
ing and smiling affectionately at each 
other, while Jean seemed almost forgotten 
by both. 

They then spoke of many things, dis- 
cussing the details of the approaching 
marriage, and when all had been satisfac- 
torily decided and settled, Mme. Rose- 


PIERRE ET JEArV 


303 


milly suddenly remembered one forgotten 
detail. 

“You have consulted M. Roland, 
have you not?” she asked. 

The mother and son both blushed sud- 
denly, while the former replied: “ Oh, 
no; it is not necessary.” 

She then hesitated, feeling that an ex- 
planation was necessary, and rejoined: 

“ We do everything without consulting 
him. It is enough to let him know what 
we have decided.” 

Madame Rosemilly smiled, without 
evincing any surprise, considering it only 
natural, as the old man counted for little 
in all their plans. 

“Suppose we go to your apartments. 
I would like to rest,” said Mme. Roland 
to Jean as they went out again. 

She felt as if she were without shelter 
and without refuge, having a horror of 
her own home. 

As she felt the door close behind her, 
she gave a deep sigh of relief, as if this 


304 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


lock assured her safety; then, instead of 
resting, as she had said, she proceeded 
to open the closets and count the 
linen, handkerchiefs and stockings. She 
changed the established order, trying to 
find more harmonious arrangements that 
would be more pleasing to the eye of a 
careful housekeeper; and when she had 
disposed of everything to her taste, piled 
the towels, the drawers and shirts on 
their special shelves, divided the linen into 
three principal classes: body linen, house 
linen and table linen, she stepped back to 
contemplate her work and called Jean. 

“Jean, come and see how pretty it 
looks! ” she said. 

He arose and admired it to please her. 
Then when he returned to his chair, she 
approached behind him with stealthy 
step and suddenly placing her right arm 
about his neck she kissed him, while she 
deposited a small object, wrapped in 
white paper, on the chimney with the 
other hand. 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


305 


“ What is that ? ” he asked. 

She made no reply, but recognizing 
the form of the frame, he understood. 

“Give it to me! ” he said. 

But she feigned to not have heard and 
returned to the wardrobe. He arose and 
snatching up the painful relic, he crossed 
the room and placed it in a drawer of his 
desk which he double locked. 

“ Now,” she said, in a trembling voice, 
while she furtively wiped a tear from her 
eye, “ I shall go and see if your new 
servant keeps your kitchen in proper 
order. As she happens to be out just 
now I can inspect it at my leisure. ” 


Pierre et Jeau ao 


CHAPTER IX. 

The letters of recommendation from 
Professors Mas-Roussel, Remusot, Flache 
and Borriquel, speaking in the most flat- 
tering terms of their pupil, Dr. Pierre 
Roland, had been submitted to the 
board of directors of the Transatlantic 
Company, supported by Messrs Poulin, 
judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, 
Lenient, big ship owner, and Marrival, 
auxiliary of the mayor of Havre, a partic- 
ular friend of Captain Beausire. 

It happened that the surgeon of the 
Lorraine had not yet been designated, 
and Pierre had the good fortune of re- 
ceiving the appointment in a few days. 

The letter notifying him of his appoint- 
ment was brought to him one morning by 
the servant Josephine, as he was finishing 
his toilet. 


306 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


307 


His first emotion was like that of a con- 
demned man, who receives the announce- 
ment of a commutation of his sentence ; 
and he immediately felt soothed by the 
thought of his departure, and of the calm 
wandering life, always rocking on the 
billowy waters, always fleeing. 

He was now living under the paternal 
roof as a dumb and reserved stranger. 
Since the night when the infamous secret 
he had discovered escaped his lips before 
his brother, he felt that he had broken 
the last links that existed between his 
family and himself. He was harassed by 
remorse for having revealed this thing to 
Jean. Though he considered himself 
odious, indecent and wicked, he, never- 
theless, felt relieved to have spoken. 

He now never met the gaze of his 
mother or of his brother. Their eyes, to 
avoid each other, had assumed a surpris- 
ing mobility, and the ruses of enemies 
who fear to meet each other. He still 
asked himself continually : “ What could 


3o8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


she have told Jean? Has she admitted 
or denied it? What does he think of her; 
what does he think of me?" He could 
not guess, and it exasperated him. More- 
over, he never spoke to them now, save 
in the presence of Roland, so as to avoid 
his questions. 

As soon as he had received his letter 
of appointment, he presented it to his 
family. His father, who had a great 
tendency to rejoice at everything, clapped 
his hands, and Jean, though his heart was 
full of joy, said in a serious tone: 

“ I congratulate you with all my heart, 
for I know there were a great many com 
petitors. You undoubtedly owe your 
success to your professors’ letters." 

And his mother lowered her head, and 
murmured: “I am very happy to know 
you have succeeded.” 

After breakfast he hastened to the 
company’s office to ask information on a 
thousand subjects; and he inquired the 
name of the surgeon on the Picardie, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


309 


which was to sail next day, that he mig-ht 
ascertain from him the details of his new 
life, and the difficulties he might encoun- 
ter. 

Learning that Dr. Pirette was on board 
he proceeded at once to the Picardie, and 
was received in a small room of the ship 
by a young man with a blonde beard, 
who resembled his brother, and with 
whom he had a long conversation. 

From the sonorous depths of the im- 
mense ship, a confused and incessant 
agitation could be heard, in which the 
falling of the merchandise being loaded 
in the hold, mingled with the sounds of 
footsteps, voices, the movement of the 
derricks lifting the cases, the whistles of 
the quartermasters, and the rumbling of 
chains dragged on deck or wound around 
the capstan by the hoarse breath of steam, 
causing a slight vibration of the entire 
body of the big ship. 

But when Pierre had left his colleague, 
and found himself once more in the street, 


310 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


a new sadness came over him, and en- 
veloped him like those mists that float 
over the sea, coming' from the other end 
of the world, and carrying in their im- 
penetrable thickness something of the 
mysterious, and of the impure, like the 
pestilent breath of malignant and distant 
lands. 

In his hours of greatest suffering he 
had never felt plunged in such a pool of 
misery. The last link had been broken; 
nothing now held him. In tearing from 
his heart the roots of all his affections, he 
had not yet experienced this distress of 
a lost dog, which had suddenly seized 
him. 

It was no longer a moral and torturing 
pain, but the terror of a beast without 
shelter, the material anguish of the wan- 
derer without a home, whom the rain, 
wind, storms, all the brutal forces of the 
world, are about to assail. As he had 
stepped on board the ship; as he entered 
that little chamber balanced on the waves. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


3II 

the flesh of the man who had always slept 
in a motionless and tranquil bed, revolted 
against the insecurity of all the future to- 
morrows. Until then that flesh had felt 
protected by the solid walls sunk into 
the firm earth, and by the certainty of 
repose in the same place, under the roof 
that resists the wind. Now, all that we 
love to brave in the warmth of a shelter- 
ing home would become a danger, and a 
constant suffering. 

No more soil under the feet, but the 
sea that rolls, that roars and ingulfs. No 
more space, to walk, to run, to lose one’s 
self in the roads, but only a few metres of 
boards on which to walk like a con- 
demned among other prisoners. No 
trees or gardens, no streets or houses, 
nothing byt water and clouds, and the 
ceaseless motion of the ship under his 
feet. On stormy days he should be 
forced to lean against the walls, hold on 
to swinging door, to clutch the edge of 
his narrow bed to prevent himself from 


312 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


rolling to the floor. On calm days he 
would hear the grinding trepidations of 
the screw and feel the rapid movement 
of the ship bearing him away in its con-- 
tinual, regular and exasperating flight. ^ 

And he was condemned to this life of a 
vagabond galley-slave, solely because his 
mother had abandoned herself to the 
caresses of a man. 

He walked on, overwhelmed by the 
desolate melancholy of people leaving 
their beloved country. 

He no longer felt in his heart that 
haughty scorn, that disdainful hatred for 
the people he passed by, but a melan- 
choly desire to speak to them, to tell 
them that he was leaving France, to be 
listened to and consoled. It was the 
shameful need of the poor who extends 
his hand, a timid and strong need of 
feeling that some one suffered at his 
departure. 

The thought of Marowsko came to 
him. The old Pole was the only one 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


313 


who loved him enough to feel a true and 
poignant emotion; and the doctor decided 
at once to go to him. 

When he entered the shop the old 
chemist, who was crushing powders in a 
marble mortar, gave a little start, and left 
his work. 

“ We never see you now,” he said, re- 
proachfully. 

The young man explained that he had 
been very busy, without, however, divulg- 
ing the motive of his occupation, and, 
seating himself, he asked: 

“Well, how is business getting on? ” 

Business was very bad. The compe- 
tition was terrible, the patients scarce 
and poor in this working-men’s quarter. 
Only cheap medicines could be sold, and 
the physicians never ordered those rare 
and complicated remedies on which one 
could make five hundred per cent. 

“ If this lasts much longer,” he con- 
cluded, “I will have to close the shop. If 
I were not counting on you, my dear 


314 


PIERRE ET JEAK 


doctor, I should have been blacking boots 
long ago.” 

Pierre felt a tightening at the heart, 
and decided to strike the blow at once, 
since he must. 

“Oh! me — me,” he said, hesitatingly, 
“ I can be of no use to you. I leave 
Havre at the commencement of next 
month.” 

Marowsko removed his glasses, so 
great was his emotion. 

“You — you — ” he murmured, “what 
are you saying? ” 

“ I say that I am going away, my poor 
friend.” 

The old man was stunned, feeling that 
his last hope was gone, and he suddenly 
revolted against this man whom he had 
followed and loved, in whom he had 
placed so much confidence and who was 
now abandoning him. 

“What! are you also going to deceive 
me in your turn? ” he stammered. 

Pierre felt so much moved, that he 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


315 


felt a desire to embrace him, and re- 
joined: 

“ But I have not deceived you. I could 
find no opening here and I am going as 
surgeon on a transatlantic steamer.” 

“Oh! Monsieur Pierre! you have so 
often promised to help me in making a 
living,” he cried, reproachfully. 

“What can I do?” rejoined Pierre, “ I 
must make my own living. I have not 
a cent in the world.” 

But Marowsko repeated: 

“ It is wrong, it is wrong, you should 
not do it. There is nothing left for me 
but starvation. At my age, it is all over. 
It is wrong. You are deserting an old 
man, who followed you here to be near 
you. It is wrong.” 

Pierre tried to explain, protesting, 
giving his reasons to prove that he 
could not do otherwise; but the Pole, 
indignant at this desertion, would not 
listen and ended by saying, alluding, no 
doubt, to some political event: 


3i6 


PIERRE ET JEAJV 


“You Frenchmen never keep your 
promises.’’ 

Pierre arose, hurt in his turn and said 
haughtily: 

“ You are unjust, Pere Marowsko. It 
required powerful motives to drive me 
to such a course; and you should un- 
derstand it. Good-by' I hope to find 
you more reasonable on my return.” 

“There,” said he when he reached the 
street, “ no one will feel a sincere regret 
for me.” 

He searched his memory, thinking in 
turn of all whom he knew or had known; 
and in the midst of all those faces defiling 
through his memory, was that of the bar- 
maid, who had first made him suspect his 
mother. 

He hesitated, still feeling an instinctive 
grudge against her, then suddenly he said 
to himself: “After all she was right,” 
and he turned into the street that led to 
the cafe. 

The cafe happened to be full of people 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


317 


and also full of smoke; it being a holiday. 
The customers — shop-keepers and work- 
ing-men — were calling, laughing, shout- 
ing, and the proprietor himself was help- 
ing the waiters, running from table to 
table, carrying away empty glasses and 
bringing them back full of froth. 

When Pierre had found a place, not 
far from the counter, he waited, hoping 
the waitress* would see him and recognize 
him. 

But she passed and repassed before 
him without as much as a glance, trotting 
by with a disdainful swish of her petti- 
coats. 

Finally he rapped on the table with a 
piece of silver, and she came in his direc- 
tion. 

“What will you have, monsieur? ” she 
said, without looking at him, apparently 
lost in the calculation of the glasses 
served. 

“ Well,” said he, “ is that the way you 
greet your friends?” 


3i8 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


She fixed her eyes on him, and in a hur- 
ried voice said: “Ah! it is you. How are 
you? But I have no time to spare, to-day. 
A bock, did you say?” 

“Yes, a bock,” he repeated. 

“I came to say ‘good-by,’” he said, 
when she brought the glass. “ I am 
going away.” 

“Ah! indeed! where are you going?” 
she asked, indifferently. 

“ To America.” 

“They say it is a beautiful country.” 

And she said nothing more. Truly he 
had chosen a bad time to speak to her. 
There were too many people there to-day. 

And Pierre went off toward the harbor. 
As he reached the pier he saw the Perle 
coming in with his father and Captain 
Beausire on board. The sailor Papagris 
was rowing, and the two men, seated in 
the stern, were smoking their pipes with 
an air of perfect happiness. As they 
passed him the young doctor thought: 
“ Blessed are the poor in spirit.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


319 


And he seated himself on one of the 
benches of the breakwater, trying to 
numb his pain in a brutal somnolence. 

When he entered the house that night 
his mother said, without daring to raise 
her eyes to his : 

“You will require a lot of things for 
your departure, and I scarcely know what 
is needed. I have ordered some under- 
wear and clothes from the tailor’s, but you, 
no doubt, need other things that I proba- 
bly know nothing about.” 

He was opening his lips to say: “ No, 
I want nothing,” but-he reflected that he 
must accept enough at least to dress 
decently, and he replied, quietly ; “ I 
scarcely know myself yet, but will inquire 
at the company’s office.” 

He did inquire, and was given a list of 
indispensable objects. His mother, as she 
received it from his hands, looked at him 
for the first time since many days, and in 
her eyes was that humble, soft, sad and 


320 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


supplicating expression of the poor beaten 
dog asking for mercy. 

On the 1st of October the Lorraine 
came from Saint-Nazaire into the port 
of Havre, to leave again on the 7th of the 
same month for New York ; and Pierre 
Roland took possession of' his little float- 
ing cabin, in which henceforth he would 
be imprisoned. 

The next day, as he was going out, he 
met his mother, who was waiting for him 
on the stairs, and she murmured in an 
almost inaudible voice: 

“ May I help you to fix up your cabin?” 

“ No, thank you, it is all done.” 

“ I should so much like to see your lit- 
tle room.” 

“ It is not worth while. It is very plain 
and very small.” 

He passed on, leaving her stunned and 
pale ; leaning against the wall for sup- 
port. 

But Roland, who visited the Lorraine 
on that very day, talked of nothing but 


* 



Vv 




L >.<:"■, Jffi J 


< 







I 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


321 


the magnificent steamer during dinner, 
and was much astonished because his 
wife evinced no desire to see it; since their 
son was to sail on her. 

Pierre saw but little of his family dur- 
ing the days that followed. He was 
nervous, irritable, harsh, and his brutal 
words seemed to lash everybody. But 
the evening before his departure he ap- 
peared suddenly changed and softened. 
He was going to sleep on board, for the 
first time, that night, and as he kissed his 
parents, he asked: 

“ Will you come and bid me farewell 
on the ship, to-morrow? ” 

“Why, yes, of course. Won’t we, 
Louise?” cried old Roland, 

“Yes, certainly,” she said in a low 
voice. 

“ We sail at eleven o’clock, precisely,” 
rejoined Pierre. 

“You must be there at half-past nine 
at the latest.” 

“There! I have an idea,” exclaimed his 

Pierre et Jean 


322 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


father. “ On leaving you we shall embark 
on the Perle and wait for you outside the 
harbor and see you once more. Won’t 
we, Louise?” 

“Yes, certainly,” she repeated. 

“ By that means,” rejoined Roland, 
“you will not confound us with the crowd 
that encumbers the quay to see a trans- 
atlantic set sail. You can never recog- 
nize your own friends in that crowd. 
Will that suit you? ” 

“ Why, yes, that suits me. It is under- 
stood, then.” 

One hour later, Pierre was stretched 
in his berth, long and narrow as a coffin. 
He remained for a long time with his eyes 
open, thinking of all that had passed dur- 
ing the last two months in his life, and 
especially in his soul. By dint of suffer- 
ing himself, and causing others to suffer, 
his aggressive and revengeful pain had 
worn itself out, like a spent wave. He 
scarcely had enough courage left to bear 
ill-will to any one or anything, and he 


PIERRE EP JEAN 


323 


allowed his indignation to go with the 
stream, like his existence. He was so 
weary of struggling, weary of striking, 
weary of detesting, weary of everything, 
that he could do no more, and tried to 
benumb his heart in forgetfulness, as we 
fall into a slumber. He vaguely heard 
around him the new noises of the ship, 
slight and almost imperceptible in this 
calm night in port; and in his wound, 
hitherto so cruel, he now only felt the 
painful throbbings of a healing wound. 

He was sleeping profoundly when the 
movements of the sailors aroused him 
from his rest. It was daylight, and the 
tidal train was just arriving at the quay, 
carrying the passengers from Paris. 

He then wandered through the ship, 
among the busy and hurrying passengers, 
searching for their state-rooms, calling to 
each other, questioning and responding 
at hazard in the bustle of departure. 
After he had saluted the captain, and 
pressed the hand of his companion, the 


324 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


purser, he entered the cabin where sev- 
eral Englishmen were already dozing. 
This was a large room, with its walls of 
white marble, framed by gilded rods, 
prolonged indefinitely in the mirrors, 
the perspective of its long tables, flanked 
by two unlimited rows of revolving chairs 
in garnet velvet. It was indeed a vast 
floating cosmopolitan hall, in which the 
rich people of all the continents were to 
eat in common. Its opulent luxury was 
that of the grand hotels, the theaters, the 
public halls; that imposing and common- 
place luxury that pleases the eye of mill- 
ionaires. The doctor was about to enter 
that part of the ship reserved for second- 
class passengers, when he recollected 
that a large number of emigrants had 
embarked the previous evening, and he 
descended to the steerage. On entering, 
he was greeted by the nauseating odor of 
poor and unclean humanity — the stench 
of nude skin more repugnant than that of 
the hair and wool of the animal, In a 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


325 


kind of obscure and low tunnel, like the 
gallery in a mine, he saw hundreds of men, 
women and children stretched on boards, 
arranged in tiers one above the other, or 
huddled together in a mass on the floor. 
He could not distinguish the faces, but 
saw in a vague way this sordid and ragged 
crowd ; a miserable mob of wretches, 
exhausted, crushed and conquered by 
life, leaving home, with an emaciated wife 
and extenuated children, for an unknown 
land where they hoped to escape starvation. 

And reflecting on their past exertions, 
their lost labors, their sterile efforts, the 
frantic struggle renewed each day in vain, 
of the energy wasted by these wretches 
who were to recommence again, without 
knowing where, that existence of abom- 
inable misery, the young doctor felt like 
crying out to them: “Why not cast 
yourself into the sea with your females 
and your young !” And his heart was so 
touched by pity that he could bear the 
sight no longer. 


326 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


He found his father and mother, with 
his brother and Mme. Rosemiiiy, awaiting 
him in his cabin. 

“ You are eariy !” he said. 

“Yes,” repiied his mother, in a trem- 
biing voice, “we wished to have time to 
see you a littie whiie.” 

He iooked at her. She was in biack, 
as if in mourning for some one, and he 
now perceived for the first time that her 
hair, stiii gray a month ago, was quite 
white. 

It was with difficuities that he suc- 
ceeded in seating these four visitors in 
his little home, while he jumped on the 
bed. Through the open door could be 
seen the crowd walking to and fro, for all 
the friends of the passengers, besides an 
army of curious people, had invaded the 
immense ship. They promenaded 
through the passages, in the cabins, 
everywhere, and some even thrust their 
heads into the room, while voices outside 
murmured: “ This is the surgeon’s room.” 


PIERRE ET JEAM 


327 


Pierre pushed the door; but as soon 
as he found himself alone with his friends, 
he felt a desire to reopen it, for the agita- 
tion without concealed their embarrass- 
ment and silence. 

Finally Madame Rosemilly broke the 
silence. 

“ There is very little air through those 
little windows,” she said. 

“It is a dead-light,” replied Pierre. 

He then showed them the thickness of 
the glass, which rendered it capable of 
resisting the most violent shocks; he 
also explained at length the closing sys- 
tem. 

“You even have your medicine in 
here! ” said old Roland. 

The doctor opened a locker and dis- 
played a collection of bottles, each bear- 
ing a Latin name on a small square of 
white paper. 

He took up one to enumerate the 
properties of its contents, then a second, 
then a third, and he went through a regu- 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


lar course of therapeutics, which was list- 
ened to with great attention. 

“How interesting! ” exclaimed Roland, 
shaking his head. 

A soft knock was heard at the door. 

“Come in!’’ cried Pierre. 

Captain Beausire entered and extended 
his hand, saying, “I came late that I 
might not disturb your leave-taking.’’ 

He was also obliged to seat himself on 
the bed, and the silence was resumed. 

But, suddenly, the sound of voices giving 
orders was heard through the partition, 
and the captain bent forward to listen. 

“ It is time for us to go,” he an- 
nounced, “ if we wish to embark on the 
Perle in time to see you leave the harbor, 
and bid you farewell on the sea.” 

Old Roland was particularly anxious 
to carry out this programme, with a view, 
no doubt, of impressing the passengers 
of the Lorraine, and he arose, hurriedly. 

“ Well, good-by, my son,” he said. 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


329 


kissing Pierre’s cheeks, and opening the 
door. 

Mme. Roland, who was very pale, did 
not move, and remained with her eyes 
cast down. 

“ Come, hurry up, we have not a 
moment to lose,” said her husband, 
touching her arm. 

She arose, took a step toward her son, 
and offered him two cheeks, as cold and 
white as wax, which he kissed without a 
word. Then hepressedthe hand of Mme. 
Rosemilly, and that of his brother. 

“ When is your marriage to take place?” 
he asked. 

“I do not know just when,” replied 
Jean. “We will make it coincide with 
one of your voyages.” 

They then ascended to the deck, which 
was encumbered with sight-seers, porters 
with bundles, and sailors. 

The steam was roaring in tne bowels 
of this enormous ship, which seemed to 
tremble with impatience. 


330 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


“ Farewell! ” cried Roland, hurriedly. 

“Farewell!” responded Pierre, as he 
stood at the gangway that connected the 
Lorraine with the quay. 

He again pressed the hands of all, 
and the family hastened away. 

“ Quick, quick, into the carriage! ” 
cried Roland. 

A cab awaited to convey them to the 
end of the pier where Papagris had the 
Perle ready to set off at once. 

There was not a breath of wind stir- 
ring ; it was one of those calm, dry days 
of autumn, when the polished surface of 
the sea seems cold and hard as steel. 

Jean seized an oar, the sailor took the 
other and they glided away. On the 
breakwater, the jetties, even on the 
granite parapet, an immense crowd, mov- 
ing and noisy, awaited the Lorraine. 

The Perle passed between these two 
waves of humanity, and was soon out of 
the harbor. 

“We shall be right in their route, 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


331 


you’ll see, just exactly,” remarked Beau- 
sire, who was seated between the two 
ladies, holding the rudder. 

The two rowers were pulling with all 
their strength, so as to be out as far as 
possible. Suddenly, old Roland cried 
out: 

“There she is, I see her masts and two 
chimneys. She is coming out of the 
basin.” 

“Bend to it, boys!” cried Beausire. 

Mme. Roland took out her handkerchief 
and placed it over her eyes. 

Roland, who was standing up holding 
on to the mast, announced: 

“ She is just turning into the outer 
harbor — She is not budging — There she 
goes again — She had to take a tug — 
She is coming — bravo ! — She is between 
the jetties! — Don’t you hear the crowd 
shouting — Bravo! — The Neptune is 
towing her — I see her hull now — Here 
she comes, here she is — Heavens, what 
a ship! Whew! look at her! — ” 


332 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


Madame Rosemilly and Beausire 
turned; the two men ceased to row; Mme, 
Roland, alone, did not move. 

The immense steamer, towed by a 
powerful tug- that looked like a caterpillar 
in front of her, came slowly and majesti- 
cally out of the harbor. And the people 
of Havre crowded on the piers, the beach, 
and in the windows, suddenly carried 
away by a patriotic impulse, shouted: 
'‘Vive la acclaiming and ap- 

plauding this magnificent departure, this 
child-birth of a great maritime city, 
giving to the ocean her most beautiful 
daughter. 

But “ She,” as soon as she had cleared 
the narrow passage inclosed between the 
two granite walls, feeling free at last, 
abandoned her tug, and glided away alone, 
like an enormous monster wandering on 
the water. 

“Here she is — here she is!” — old 
Roland still cried. “And she is making 
directly for us.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


333 


And Beausire, radiant with delight, 
kept repeating: “ What did I promise 
you, eh! Don’t I know their route?” 

“ Look, she is approaching! ” whispered 
Jean to his mother. 

And Mme. Roland uncovered her eyes, 
blinded with tears. 

As soon as she had cleared the harbor, 
the Lorraine advanced at full speed. It 
was a clear, calm day, and Beausire, with 
his glass fixed on her, announced: 

“Look there! M. Pierre is standing 
alone at the stern, in full view. Atten- 
tion!” 

High as a mountain and swift as a 
train, the ship now passed, almost touch- 
ing the Perle. 

And Mme Roland, wild with despair, 
extended her arms toward him; and she 
saw her son, her son Pierre, with a gold- 
laced cap on his head, throwing her fare- 
well kisses with both hands. 

But he was gliding away, he was flying, 
disappearing, already becoming so small. 


334 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


A^anishing like an inperceptible spot on 
the gigantic ship. She made one effort 
to see him again, and then could distin- 
guish him no more. 

“You saw him,” said Jean, taking her 
hand. 

“Yes, I saw him. How kind he is.” 

And they turned toward the city. 

“ Mercy! how fast it goes,” declared 
Roland, with enthusiastic conviction. 

The ship, in fact, was diminishing sec- 
ond by second, as if melting into the 
ocean. Mme. Roland turned and watched 
him vanishing in the horizon, toward an 
unknown land, at the other end of the 
world On that ship that nothing could 
now stop, on that ship that she soon 
would no longer see, was her son, her 
poor boy. And it seemed as if half her 
heart went with him, as if her life was 
ended, for it seemed as if she would never 
see her child again. - 

“ Why do you cry? ” asked her husband, 
“he will be back in less than a month.” 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


335 


“ I do not know,” she sobbed. “ I 
weep because I am ill.” 

“When they reached the shore, Beau- 
sire left them at once, as he was to break- 
fast with a friend, and Jean and Mme. 
Rosemilly went on ahead. 

“Our Jean is a mighty well-built man, 
all the same,” declared Roland to his 
wife. 

“ Yes,” she replied, and being too much 
overcome to think of what she was say- 
ing, >he added: “ I am very glad that he 
is going to marry Madame Rosemilly.” 

“Ah! bah! What! He is going to 
marry Madame Rosemilly?” he exclaimed, 
astounded. 

“ Why, yes. We intended to ask your 
consent this very day.” 

“ Well! I declare. Has this thing been 
going on long? ” he asked, amazed. 

“ Oh! no, only a few days, Jean wanted 
to make sure he would be accepted before 
consulting you.” 

“Very well! very well!” cried the old 


336 


PIERRE ET JEAN 


man, rubbing his hand. “ It has my entire 
approval.” 

As they left the quay and took the 
Boulevard Fran9ois I., his wife turned 
once more to cast a last look at the high 
sea; but she saw nothing but a small 
gray cloud of smoke, so distant and so 
slight that it seemed like mist. 


THE END. 


A LITERARY GEM. 

Mademoiselle de Maiipin, 

A ROMANCE OF LOVE AND PASSION. 

By THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 


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E. T. Roe, formerly editor of the Athenceum, after counseling with the 
most eminent of the Poets as to which of their writings were hy them re- 
garded as their favorite and choicest Poems. The volume is illustrated 
with 23 full-page engravings, and is bound in extra silk cloth, full gilt 
edges, with an original and unique design embossed on side and back in 
Ink and Gold It will be found a most valuable addition to any library, 
and will make an acceptable gift to a friend. 

A special feature of the collection is an autograph letter from William 
Cullen Bryant to the editor, in which he makes a selection of three of his 
favorite poems, and refers to the effective manner in which one of them 
was recited by Mrs. Siddons in New York City. 

The poems of Longfellow and some of those of other eminent Amerl- 
4;an Poets, were specially selected by the authors for this collection. 

Many of the poems contained in POETIC JEWELS cannot be h?^ 
outside of its pages. 


REMARKS OF THE REVIEWERS. 

“We find that the selections are literary gems from the best authors of all.” 

—New England Journal of Education, 

“The editor is a man of taste and erudition, and culls from standard and classic 
authors the choicest gems of our language.” — America?i Art Journal. 

“The selections are not of the hackneyed range, but of poems of great merit not 
generally known except in the literary world.” — The Christiafi Statesman. 

“Permit me to say that I consider your selections better than any I find in the 
-various compilations now before the public.” MOSES T. BROWN, A.M., 

Prof, of Oratory at Tuffs College, Boston, 

“The East has a large number of such publications, but none of them so fuiiy 
secures the end sought as the Atheneum Collection — putting in tangible form the rich- 
est gems of our literature at so very small expense.” 

PROF. WM. W. THOMPSON, 
Principal of Amsterdam ( N. V.) Academy, 


This beautiful! vohiime with full gilt edges will be sent to any address 
postpaid, on •^ceipt of $ 1 . 60 . 

LAIRD & LEE, Publishes, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 


SPECFAL ANNOUNCEMENT, 


The fiext issue (J'lumben 4) of 

The Library of Choice Fiction, 

Ready Sept. 1st, will be sne of the most 
celebrated of modern novels, 

SHADOWED ' BY THREE. 


By LAWRENCE L LYNCH, 

OF THE SECRET SERVICE. 


This Grand Story makes a volume of 670 pages, 
illustrated with 55 full-page engravings. 


Very few works in the English language have attained the enormous 
circulation of Shadowed by Three, and it is safe to say that none 
have afforded more pleasure and satisfaction to its readers. It is intensely 
exciting from the first page to the last, and once commenced, the reader k 
so captivated that he cannot be induced to lay it aside until its startling 
complications have been unraveled. 

Never before have the hazards, adventures and exciting incidents 
of the Detective’s dangerous calling been portrayed by the pen cf a 
master-writer. Only the keen intellect of a Bathurst, the very Prince of 
Detectives, could have found and followed the semblance of a clue that 
was placed in his hands. At every step his pursuit was baffled by onfe, 
who, though a murderer, was in intelligence, courage, skill, and fertility of 
resource, scarcely inferior to the Master Detective who untiringly followed 
on his trail, baffled at every hand, but never for a moment discouraged 5 in 
hourly danger of death, but never disheartened or dismayed. 


Every number of THE LIBRARY OF CHOICE FICTION is printed on 
a superion quality of book paper, from large type, and elegantly 
bound in paper covers. 

They are fo** sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, and op 
all railroad trains. 

LAIKD & LEE, Poblisliers, CHICAGO, ILIU 


Emile Zola's Powerful Realistic Novels 

** After reading Zola’s novels it seems as if in all others, even 
In the truest, there were a veil betwee*' th^* reader and the things 
described, ani there is present to our mind the same difference as 
exists between the representations of human faces on canvas and 
the reflection of the same faces in the mirror. It is like finding 
truth for the first XivciQ,— Signor de Amicis, 


NANA. Translated from the 127th French edition, 

LA TERBE. M. Zola says of this, one of his latest works, 
I have endeavored to deal with the French peasant in 
this book, just as I dealt with the Paris workman in 
‘ UAssommoir.’ I have endeavored to write his history, to 
discribe his manners, passions and sorrows in the latal 
situations and circumstances in which he finds himself. ” 

L^ASSOMMOIR. Translated from the 97th French edition. 

NANA’S DAUGHTER. A Reply to « Nana." 

A DREAM OP LOVE. 

POT BOUILLE. (Piping Hot!) Translated from the 87th 
French edition. 

THE LADIES’ PARADISE. Translated from the 84th 
French edition. 

NANA’S BROTHER. GERMINAL. Translated from 

the 47th French edition. 

abbe' mouret’s transgression. Translated 

from the 5 2d French edition. 

THE JOYS OP LIFE. Translated from the 44th French 
edition. 

A LOVE EPISODE. Translated from the 52d French 
edition. 

HUMAN BRUTES. (La Bfite Humaine.) 25 ola*s latest 
work. 

Above books are printed on good paper from large and arf' 
appropriately illustrated. They are the best editior 
of Emile Zola’s works published in America. 

LAIRD & LEE, Publishers, 
903*305 lackson Street CHICAGO. UX 




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